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A Bad Business

2010-07-06T19:01:00.000-07:00

I never expected to last this long, truth be told, but even so the imminence of my demising still took me by the bowels and squeezed me tight. I'd been soldiering almost fifteen years now, been through my fair share of tight spots and was hurt bad enough in '37 that the chirugeon wanted to put me down like an old horse. He didn't though, and I walked sure enough a few days later out of his butcher tent. Now it seemed like my luck had fair run out, and the end couldn't be too far away.

We'd been running for about two days, what remained of the Fifth Company and me, running and trying to make the Samael River. If we could ford it, we'd have a chance of finding some measure of safety in Hommlet proper, or at least make a go at holding the bride. No such luck. The Captain was a good man, refused to leave Jennings or Gilbert behind, wounded as they were. Good men both, but they were like to be the death of us, slowing us down as they were. Hard enough to make your way down these mountains without having to carry two stretchers. Still, none spoke up to gainsay the Captain. Could have been any of us on those stretchers, and what would we have said then?

Air cold and thin so that the orc's cries carried down shrilly to us through the mountain pass above. Must have been some thirty of them on our trail, enough to sweep a us away if they made a bold front of it, but for some reason they were holding back, shy like maidens to their marriage bed. Mayhaps they thought there were more of us then there really were, mayhaps they thought we'd more strength in our sword arms, or maybe they were just enjoying the chase like a cat will with a mouse. Either way, those shrill cries and jagged laughs dogged out steps, and when we were close to true collapsation and the Captain ordered we rest for a few hours, those very same laughs haunted our dreams, stupored as we were.

I'll give the young Captain this much, he knew how to pick a defensive spot. The little pocket he found in the rock was barely large enough to hold the fifteen of us, and could only be approached through a narrow cleft in the wall. Only one way in, and if the orcs tried to rush us that night they'd have had to come one at a time, and we'd have choked up that cleft till their bodies bottled it up like bleeding corks. Course, one way in meant one way out, and I think that was part of the Captain's decision making process. He'd sized us up, taken measure of our desperation, and then cooly made sure none of us would bolt when the attack came. Gave us no choice, really, and in doing so assured him that every last one of us one stand and fight.

Gorgeous night. Propped up against the rough rock, I couldn't help but stare at the stars. Something about them always draws my eye before a tough fight. Just when I'm about to get in the thick of it, they're always there, distant and cool and untroubled. Makes me think all sorts of nonsense, and it's those times when I get to thinking about how a farming life wouldn't have been all bad; get to thinking a barn and a field or two, some hogs and life with my hands in the earth instead of wrapped around a sword might have been mighty fine, after all. But inevitably I look away from the stars and remember the stench of hog shit steaming in the cold dawn, remember how painful the cold water from the well would chap my hands and the pains and aches that would get in my back and arse and never go away were, and such thoughts would pass.

Captain came over and sat down next to me. He'd ditched his fancy shield a few miles back, a big gleaming thing of heavy metal with a red dragon painted on its front. Beautiful and heavy and now dropped and gone. Smart lad.

"Another hour, I think, and then we'll move on," he said, though I knew he'd give us at least two more. "We stop for too long there will be no moving us."

"Aye," I said, and wished for thousandth time for my pipe. That had gone with my pack yesterday when I felt like I was like to keel over from exhaustion. "Be good to be on the move once more."

We didn't say anything for a spell, and then Jennings got to groaning and the Captain stared in his direction.

"They never describe these parts," he said, voice low, "At least, I never heard of Silbaris the Silver or Kurg Iron Hand having to decide whether to leave a wounded friend behind. All bravery and glory in the songs. Not like this."

I kept quiet. The Captain bit his lower lip for awhile, chewed on it, clearly thinking, and then looked over to me.

"What do you think, Jag?" His voice was quiet, and I knew what he was asking. I sighed.

"It's a bad business no matter how you cut it, Captain," I said. "There's no right or wrong here. Just a question of how practical you want to be."

"Practical," he said. His dark face was haggard. I'd thought him less than twenty when we first set out. Now he seemed as old as I was. "Now there's a word to haunt your thoughts."

Jennings groaned again, and subsided.

"We're about twelve hours from the river," he said. "We can cut that to six if we travel fast. The orcs will make a play for us just before we break the tree line. Which means we'll have to take the last mile or so on the run, or be dragged into a standing fight, and we can't win that."

I waited, giving him room to talk himself into it. Idealism always goes last with some, but if they're good, if they have the makings of a good leader, it will go just the same.

Another long pause, and then the Captain stood up. I'd like to say he looked wiser, stronger, something, but to me he just looked even more tired. As if a candle had been blown out from behind his eyes. He stood looking at nothing for a long time, and then, without another word to me, drew his knife and walked over to the wounded.

A bad business, no matter how you cut it.

The well of obsoletion

2008-11-20T15:02:00.001-08:00

The story starts as an automaton repairman encounters paradigm shifts while in a tower. The overall narrative features nostalgia for a past that never was.

The tower was wavering and wobbling, shifting like a boiled noodle and most like that was because I’d been drinking and drinking until I got myself drunk. The walls wavered and seemed to shiver with frissons of excitement as I passed them, thick gray blocky stones made out of as they were. Doors had frames that just wouldn’t sit still. I’d of pounded sense into them if I hadn’t known that would be seen as crazy talk made flesh and bone. Bone that would break if I hit them hard enough. In the war with wood bone will lose, most times, unless you got kung fu training.

Which I don’t.

So I ignored it all with glorious superiority which I don’t know if the walls and doors noticed. I made my way into the tower, which is a vertical progression, not a horizontal one, but I had to ascend to get to where the work was waiting for me. Some droid or robot or automaton that needed fixing. The owner had probably failed to plug it in. Or turn it on. Waste of my time, as almost all of these things were. If I could bury one of my leadrouters into an eye socket every time I was drawn out here for no reason I’d have a lot less leadrouters. So I guess it’s good I don’t.

Sometimes I think about turning these robots into maniacal suicidal doodads. Just amp up their kill factors till they can’t see straight, till they see snakes and bugs everywhere and go a chopping till their paychecks get cut. I could do it without much bother, just find myself a nice fine tough robot and get it all ramped up and let it loose, but hell, it’s an idea that appeals as long as you keep it abstract. You go implementing ideas like that, you’ll just make a mess everywhere. And then people would be yelling and getting all excited and demanding answers and these days I just want to be let alone because, really, is that too much to ask? You’d think it was.

Didn’t always used to be like this. Some time ago it was better, golden age years, halcyon times, you know? You could roll up with a gleaming set of spanners and reap all the respect you wanted, offered up, proffered up like you were some passing God, some bastard child of James Dean and Pan, harvesting adulation wherever it was you went. Back when the droids and robots and servitors and metalheads were all brand spanking new, the new wave, the ultimate in revolutionary home décor, the flim flam of the ne plus ultra. And we were their high priests, their ablutors. Magic time.

Not any more. These days I don’t even shave when I wake up, don’t comb my hair, can barely bother to rub the grit out of my eyes. I just roll out of bed and figure out where I’m heading next. Sucks when you become obsolete, when you don’t have a skill set to roll you into the next wave of ultimate home décor or robot apparel. I guess I could adapt, learn a new trade, but I don’t have the inclination. School ain’t for me, not any more, and hell, I like them old rusting metaljunkers and ambulatory system droids. They’re mute and sorrowful like an old dog, too tired to get up, gazing up at you with that same mute adoration that just gets the more painful to regard the closer the damn beast gets to needing to be put down.

Sometimes I sit down before one of them old robots and just stare them in the face. They don’t have much as far as faces go, just enough to orient a body when you’re dealing with them, but in that very simplicity I find a poignancy that I don’t think would be there if there were finely articulated features. Just bland, innocuous contours and hints of eyes, nose, mouth. Those eyes. Dead rings of burned out LCD’s around the camera lenses. I just sit down before them, knees popping like old wood getting snapped, and stare them in the face. Wish they could speak, sometimes. Not because I would want them to jabber at me, but it would make the silence more companionable if I knew they had the ability but were choosing to just sit quiet. Sit quiet like I do.

Never mind. I’m just an ornery old man. Grease and oil stuck so deep into my skin and calluses that my hands look permanently bruised. Got a wealth of knowledge on systems outmoded, outdated, prehistoric, gone and vanished down the obsoletion well. Some point along the way I went from being an automaton repairman to a custodian of history, a guardian of forgotten lore.

One of these days I’ll program a robot to do something foolish. Something that’ll make a mess. Maybe I’ll have him turn on me, take me down, end it all. Fitting, that, disassembled by the very things I’ve spent my life constructing. Maybe some day soon. Till then, I’ll just keep working. Day by day. Starting with this droid, here in this tower. Look at his dumb face. Dumb as a load of bricks. Poor idiot. More like me than the people I see around. We’re dying breeds, both.

Swordsmiths and sniffer cats

2008-11-19T19:20:00.000-08:00

The story challenges the boundaries of stories. Romance blossoms between a daring smuggler and a swordsmith, while difficulties they encounter include a dystopia and a mechanical cat.

The sky was toxic orange, overcast and glowed like a banked fire despite the late hour. Light pollution was ubiquitous, universally accepted, and no longer remarked upon. The only place darkness reigned was beneath the covers and within closed closets. The moon had become a thing of legend, and the stars were rumored to have long ago died out. Yuri wiped the back of his sleeve across his nose, and then, hitching his backpack, stepped out from the doorway into the umber lit evening.

His first run. The trick was not to fall into a regular walking pattern. If your face was lowered, the cameras would focus on your gait, and seek to match it to your file. By placing a small pebble in one of your shoes, you could confound their sensors, and force them to rely on your fake ID signal. Tonight Yuri was masquerading as Thomas Efrit, a Level 5 citizen. The ruse wouldn’t stand up to close scrutiny, but should be enough to fool the camera systems. Fool them for a few hours, perhaps, but that was all he needed.

Yuri threaded his way through the busy streets, keeping his head down, gait uneven. He crossed through Blackfriars, and then reached the area where the Thames ran below ground. The bridges were now architectural curiosities, arching up over the smooth, industrial ground that had been laid down decades ago below and about them. Yuri hustled under London Bridge, out the other side, and then crossed over into the East Side.

Fifteen minutes later, heart pounding, he reached the right building. There were less cameras here, but still his nonchalance was feigned when he knocked on the door, pressing his palm momentarily against the smart surface so that it could read his fake ID, the information laced into his subcutaneous layer earlier that evening by his home made chemistry kit. The door glowed subtly about his palm, and he dropped his arm to his side. The die were cast. Time to see what came up.

Two minutes passed before the door cracked open. The longest two minutes of the day thus far. Without a backwards glance Yuri slipped through the door and into the hallway beyond, the interior of the building constructed on the antiquated models of long ago. A woman was standing before him, her dark hair pulled back into a rough pony tail, her mouth set in a frown.

“Who are you?”

“Yuri,” he said, ducking his head quickly. “Matteo couldn’t come. He’s been Detained.” The woman’s frown grew deeper, and then she took his palm and before he could react she jabbed a syringe into the flesh of his hand and drew it back out just as quickly.

“Just a precaution,” she said, smiling humorlessly at him. She ignored him then, shaking the syringe several times before raising it to look at the LCD that ran along its side. Yuri eyed the hollow of her throat, noted the sweat the was cooling on her skin. He tried not to look at the swell of her breasts beneath her black sweater, barely succeeded.

“Yuri Kolchenko,” she confirmed, lowering the syringe. “Your first run?”

“Yes,” he said, decided on the spot to abandon all pretense, the lies he had prepared to impress her. He knew, somehow, that she wouldn’t have bought them. “But I’m not worried.”

“You should be,” she said, turning and leading him further into the house. “But perhaps in this case ignorance is bliss. Come on.”

“What’s your name?” he asked, tripping after her and then following her through a door and down a flight of stairs into the darkness below.

“Vic,” she said without looking over her shoulder. “You can call me Vic.”

“Vic,” he said, testing it out. “Nice to meet you, Vic.”

She didn’t respond, instead stepping out into a large basement which lit up as she walked into it. Yuri gave his customary look around for a camera lens, didn’t see any. Didn’t mean they weren’t there, though.

A forge dominated the low ceilinged room, and made of the air a hot, blasted thing. Deep crimsons smoldered in the heart of the pressure furnace, and the wall was hung with hammers, tongs, and other more obscure tools. No swords were in evidence though.

Vic strode over to a bank of monitors and crossed her arms as she stared at each in turn. Wandering over, Yuri saw that they covered different streets around her building. Avenues of approach.

“You’ve hacked into the cam network?” he asked, impressed.

“Hmm,” said Vic. “You sure you weren’t followed?”

“Followed?” Yuri felt a surge of adrenaline and mild panic at the very idea. “No, I don’t think so. The fake ID is good, top quality, stolen just thirty seconds before I began using it. And I kept my biometrics hidden. No reason I should have been—“

“Then what’s that?” asked Vic, stabbing a finger at one of the screens where a small shape was walking sinuously on four legs down the center of the street.

“That’s a… that’s a cat?” Yuri felt his heart plunge into his shoes.

“A sniffer cat,” confirmed Vic, voice grim. “If it finds us, if it keeps to your trail…”

“Shit,” said Yuri, bunching his hands into fists. “Shit shit shit. What do we do?”

Vic turned to him, and instead of looking angry she seemed tiredly amused. “If there was a sniffer cat out there, than there was little you could have done to avoid it. What do we do? I’m going to have a stiff drink. If it finds us, we’ll try to take it down, and then we run.”

“Run…” said Yuri. His first job and a sniffer cat had picked up his trail. That was impossibly bad luck. He watched Vic move over to a shelf where she opened a bottle and poured two fingers of a liquid the color of cigars into a tumbler. And then into a second.

“Come on, kid. You’re going to need this if things get hairy.”

Yuri walked over and took up the glass. “What is this?”

“Irish whiskey.”

“But that’s…” said Yuri, and then trailed off when he realized how stupid he must sound.

“Illegality doesn’t bother me much,” said Vic, her smile reappearing. “You sure you ready for this kind of work?”

“Yes! I mean, I think so. I don’t know.” He felt his face burn, and Vic laughed, and her face became strikingly attractive. She had a wide smile, bright white teeth. She clicked her tumbler against his, and they both drank. Warmth and fire and smoke washed down his gullet, and he tried not to cough.

Vic had turned to the screen. The sniffer cat had moved into another camera’s view, and was now pacing back and forth before her door, seemingly uncertain. She set her tumbler down and leaned over to open a steamer trunk. Reaching down, she pulled out a cloth wrapped object, long and heavy, and handed it to him.

Yuri took it and unwrapped the oiled cloth. The blade was brilliant in his hands, like a shard of lightning. Light and pliant, it seemed to thrum through the flesh of his hands, resonate in his bones.

“Easy,” said Vic, catching the look on his face. “You just watch my back with that.”

“No,” said Yuri, and wrapped the cloth back around the blade. “I’ve got another idea.”

“Oh?” asked Vic, clearly dubious.

“I’m going back out. I’ll cross a street over, let it catch sight of me. I’ve not been out of its sight for more than a couple of minutes thus far. I’ll draw it away. Send someone else to come pick up the swords next time.” Vic was eyeing him appraisingly. “There’s no need to expose your operation,” he said, feeling both doomed, excited, and numb all in one.

“You realize what will happen if it decides to move in on you,” she said, voice level.

“I don’t care. I knew this was serious when I volunteered.” He raised his chin. The whiskey was burning in his stomach. Made him feel like running, like kissing Vic on her generous lips.

She simply looked at him, and that was all the permission he needed. Turning, he strode toward the stairs, and turned as he gained the first and looked over his shoulder at her. “Nice meeting you, Vic,” he said.

“Don’t do this, Yuri,” she said. “You don’t know what you’re getting into.”

“True. But who knows. I might get lucky.”

“Ha,” she said, and her eyes gleamed. Perhaps she was feeling the burn of the whiskey again. “You come by another night, and we'll discuss the odds of that.”

Yuri blinked, and it took him a moment to understand what she meant. Then his face burned all over again, and she laughed at the sight of him. “Wish me luck,” he mumbled, managed to flash a grin at her, part disbelief, part panic at the prospect of hitting the streets again, and began to make his way back up.

“Luck,” he heard Vic say below, and then he was heading out the back door, and back into the street. He lowered his face automatically, fixed the hitch into his gait, and began to stride down the street. He’d hang a left past the sniffer cat at the next junction. The sky was a dull lambent orange above him, and the crowds had thinned out. Time to play at cat and mouse, but all he could think of was Vic down below. New motivation, he reflected with a rueful grin, to make it through the night.

The Masque of the Red Death

2008-11-17T20:11:00.000-08:00

Your story is a romance between an efficient assistant and an undercover law enforcement agent. The lovers experience a pandemic and a partnership of equals while in a decaying palazzo. One of them is motivated to protect one person (regardless of who else gets hurt in the process).

The "Red Death" had long devastated the country. Bodies piled up like cords of wood, stiff and crimson of visage, faces startled by how sudden and gruesome death had been when it came for them. Cities became mass charnel houses, and bone orchards everywhere were inundated with cadavers. The skies grew dark with cyclones of ravens and crows, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence was drowned.

Rakehell and agent to the crown Honoré de March had been assigned by the failing King to travel deep into the countryside and locate Prince Prospero’s castellated retreat, his grand palazzo, his fabulous abbey. The King’s young seer, Miranda, had foreseen the Prince’s death at midnight two weeks hence, and de March had been ordered to save his life, come hell or high tide. So it was with grim determination that the pair headed North into the deep woods, traveling under the dark canopies until they reached the massive curtain wall that circled the abbey and guarded the Prince and his cohorts from the plague that raged across the county so.

Under cover of night they scaled the massive walls, and like moths falling from the night sky dropped to the ground undetected and melted into the festive throngs. At first de March was taken aback by the displays of gaucherie and decadence, by the lack of taste and decorum. Knights and ladies, courtiers and pages, all cavorted and danced, whirled and whorled under the night sky and within the halls, nude and partially dressed, slathered in grotesque costumes and sporting lascivious masks. Silks and velvet, minks and chains, spilt wine and spoiled food. The palazzo reeked with hedonistic abandon.

Miranda, barely twenty years old, flame haired and fiercely freckled, followed de March like a hesitant shadow, a candle flame in danger of being puffed out by the wind. She watched wide eyed as a circle of men and women cheered on a man as he mortified his flesh, wide eyed and lost. She stared with horror as a man turned kitchen instruments upon his partner, and averted her gaze when she saw a woman blank eyed being used by a line of petitioners.

de March shepherded her into a quiet space, a place where the music couldn’t reach them, as remote and secluded as they could get.

“Miranda,” he said, shaking her to get her attention. “Wake up, snap out of it.”

“They court death,” she said. “They court death, defy it.

“More fool them. Are you alright? Will you be able to retain your wits?

“I’ve seen much with my Second Sight, seen much on the roads and paths that have brought us here. But this, it is something else. Something worse than a corpse abandoned in a cross road, or a pile of bodies left to rot. This is solicitation. This is the will to life inverted.

“Well, I’m not sure what you’re talking about, but come on now, focus. When is it coming? When does Death come for Prince Prospero?

“Tonight,” said Miranda, pulling out a sheaf of tarot cards. She knelt down, cast them into a cross, and then referenced the cards revealed against a couple of slender tomes. “Yes, tonight,” she said, certainty in her voice. “Everybody dies tonight. The jig is up. Less than an hour, perhaps.

“An hour? Crap,” said de March. “Fine, fine.

“Prince Prospero is going to die. You’re going to die. I’m going to die.

“Your small talk is awful,” said de March absently, and then turned from her. “Ready?

“No, I’m afraid not,” said Miranda, sinking to her side. “I shall await death here.

“Fine, fine,” said de March striding off. It would probably be easier without her at his side,
muttering her dark aspirations anyway. Back into the throng he plunged, at home in this riotous element, spinning between dancers, lifting his knees in plange et fort when the music called for it, taking glasses of wine when proffered to him and tossing them, glass and all, over his shoulder. He waved aside an offer to partake in sausage rolls, and bowed out of a game of bridge. Finally he came to the colored suites, the green and white and orange suites, lit from without by the candelabra placed outside the windows that looked in.

There—Prince Prospero. The Prince cut a fine figure. Broad shouldered, confident, his handsome face was ablaze with delight and life. How could Miranda call this man anything but alive? de March glanced about, sought out Death. Nowhere to be seen. A clock somewhere began to strike midnight, the tones so disjointed and jarring that the music stilled, revellers ceased their dancing, and all gazed at each other with apprehension and doubt.

A hand gripped his, cold and slight. Looking down, de March saw Miranda. Her face was pale, the bones in her skull prominent. de March gave a start—she looked dead already.

“The time has come for the unmasqueing,” she said, and pulled him down so that their lips met. She pressed her cool lips against his own in a chaste kiss, and then stepped back. Surprised, unsure of himself, de March watched as she wrapped her cloak about herself, and straightened, seeming to grow taller. de March staggered back. Miranda’s face was growing increasingly ghastly, twisted and warped, wholly unlike herself. Her features grew contorted, and blood seeped out from her skin, milked from her flesh so that it soaked her robes and brow.

The clock finished chiming midnight, and the crowds turned to each other, relieved, only to see Miranda standing amidst them, tall and gaunt and altogether horrible. They drew back, began to murmur to each other.

"Who dares?" Prince Prospero demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood near him -- "who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? Seize him and unmask him -- that we may know whom we have to hang at sunrise, from the battlements!"

People surged forward and then stopped just shy of Miranda. She was staring with her ghoul eyes at where the Prince stood. de March drew forth his flintlock, and tried to cock it. His fingers fumbled. His breath was stilled within his chest. Miranda began to surge forwards, the crowd falling back like parted waters. From the blue room she went to the purple -- through the purple to the green -- through the green to the orange -- through this again to the white -- and even thence to the violet. None stopped her, only de March faltered after her, gun raised, trying to pull the trigger.

Prince Prospero then drew a dagger, his face contorted with rage. Into the black and final room he plunged, intent on Miranda, dagger held up high. A premonition hit de March, and he knew that should that blade pierce Miranda’s cloaks, then would the Prince’s death be terrible indeed, lasting a month for each day he had spent in seclusion here in the palazzo. Gun raised, he changed his aim, and pulled the trigger.

Screams. Prince Prospero fell, shot through the back. Summoning their courage, a throng of revellers threw themselves into the black velvet room, and clawed at Miranda, only to draw back once more as her vestments collapsed untenanted to the ground. Already people were swaying, moaning, clawing at their necks as blood sprang fresh and bright from their faces.

de March stumbled away, fled the crowds. People were screaming, raw and terrified. Down hallways and passages he ran, till finally he came across the nook in which he had last seen Miranda examine her cards. And there she lay, curled into a question mark, her chest rising and falling in shallow breaths. de March collapsed beside her, sat back against the wall. Pain was in his joints, his skin was on fire. There wasn’t much time left to him. His mission had been a failure, destined to be such from its incipience. Reaching down,he pulled Miranda’s slight form towards him, pulled her into his arms. Her eyes remained closed.

Not much time left now. The screams were horrendous. He would not cry out, no matter the pain. Lifting Miranda, he gazed at her fine boned face, at her pale, bloodless lips. She had kissed him, before the last. He didn’t know what it meant, but leaning his head, he kissed her of his own will, returned her kiss. Her eyes opened and they were scarlet, livid and solid red. Her lips smiled against his, and she bit down on his tongue.

Argentinean Steakhouse

2008-11-16T20:33:00.001-08:00

The protagonist of this story is a recovering junkie who has a scar on their face. On the way to the story's conclusion the protagonist encounters a Canadian. This person has an armored draisine. Plot elements include learning to use new weapons and rivals seeking someone's favor, and at least one character is motivated because they've always wanted to open a really good restaurant.

It had all gone wrong. I must have been halfway up through Minnesota by the time I ran out of gas. Every pump and station that I’d passed on those final hundred miles or so had already been drained dry by previous pilgrims. One by one I’d discarded my reserve oil canisters, pouring them into the engine of my car, till finally the gas needle has sunk below red and my engine had coughed, sputtered, and rolled to a halt on the empty shoulder of I95.

I’d known this moment would have come, thought it was going to back in Ohio when I’d hit that lonely stretch of highway and had to hightail it on foot for two days before reaching a gas station with reserves. Still, it was hard to give up the car. The progress was going to be mighty slow from here on out, even on the bike, and I’d have to ditch most of my stuff.

Getting out of the car, I surveyed the gray, ashen skies. It was daytime, or so I reckoned, evinced by a lightening of the permanent cloud cover. A wind scoured the rusted hulks that lined the lanes of the highways, and I shrugged deeper into my jacket. Maybe another couple of hundred miles till the border, and then up further beyond the fall out zone. Safety. Maybe.

I unstrapped the bike and got out my hiking backpack. It was going to be exhausting work pedaling with all that gear on my back, but there was nothing for it. I was already weak from going cold turkey on the Warren Cocktails. Shaky. But there'd been no way to take them with me, given their shelf life. I balled my hands into fists, and walked to the back of the car.

I opened the trunk and surveyed my collection of stainless steel pans, my wide array of butcher knives, the Bain Marie’s and strainers, ladles and basting pots, frying pans and can openers. Things I’d gathered along the way for when I finally made it to my destination. Looked like I was going to have to scavenge a whole new set of items when I arrived.

I began cycling north. At first the bike weaved and wavered as if I was drunk, but I soon found my style, and the miles began to unroll beneath my wheels. The highway headed north, always north, leaving the disaster area that was the everything within hundreds of miles of Washington DC and pretty much the whole of continental North America behind. I’d heard stories of people living out beyond the Rockies, sheltered and safe along the California coastline. Heard that much of Mexico was doing fine, though the islands had all turned into blights amidst the silty ocean. Not for me, though. I wanted north, up to Canada, maybe as far as the Arctic Circle if I had to. Pure air. Fresh and cold. That’s what I wanted.

About evening, as the shadows grew, if not longer, than more pervasively dark, I slowed down. Sweat was dripping from my nose and chin, and I felt weak, fain about to pass out. I near fell off the bike when I stopped, and unhitched my pack and let it crash to the ground. Nothing to see for miles but bare, dead trees, abandoned cars and drifts of ash. Maybe I had the radiation sickness. Maybe Doc Haddow had been wrong, and not enough years had gone by. I hunkered down and pressed my thumbs into my eyes and tried to not think about home.

The Warren, we’d taken to calling it. Twelve layers of subterranean bomb shelter just south of DC, right where the blast hit. Twelve layers so deep in the ground it had been safe for those who’d entered and locked the pressurized doors and taken the elevators down, down, down into the darkness. Bedrooms and recreational areas, a few biodomes and plenty of communications equipment. Built to house over 8,000 people by President Clinton back in 2020, but only some 2,500 had managed to get in before the bomb went off.

The wind was picking up, and I was beginning to shiver, the sweat turning to ice down my spine. I should be setting up the tent, getting my sleeping bag out, preparing for the plunge in temperature that always accompanied nightfall. But instead I simply hugged my knees and thought of what people would be doing back home on Level 4 in the Warren. The traditions that had set up these past fifteen years. The routines that made life bearable.

I was only six when I’d gone below. I’d not seen the sky nor sun now earth now the horizon except in movies and simulations. Maybe that’s what had caused me to buck and run. That and the desire to find fresh food. Fresh produce to cook with. Something beside the algae and carefully managed farm meat that was cultivated so assiduously on Level 7. God, watching those movies where people sat down and ate and ate and ate. Enough to drive a man mad.

A rhythmic creaking caught my attention. I ignored, thinking it the wind at first, but it kept growing louder. I was so cold by then, so stiff from the biking that I didn’t rise, just listened, mesmerized, until the creaking began to die away. Suddenly, not wishing to be left alone in the dark, I rose to my feet, grabbed my back and went crashing off the shoulder of the highway into the brittle bushes that snapped and broke before me, chasing the sound down.

Down a ditch and up the other side, through sparse undergrowth and then I hit railroad tracks, nearly tripped on the rubble and the bright lines of metal. Looking up and down the line, I saw something dark moving away from me, heading north along the rails, and with a cry I gave it chase, feet pounding on the rocks, each step jarring my bones and causing my head to pound.

It was a machine of some kind, a platform stuck right on the rails, a massive and ornate bicycle set in its center on which a fellow was pedaling with methodical intensity. He didn’t even look over his shoulder as I came close, running alongside. I unhitched my bag and swung it onto the platform, but a bright flare of electric blue light sizzled into place when my bag flew through the air, and sent it bouncing back into the darkness.

Blind panic seized me, a fierce desire to not be alone. I’d not been alone these past fifteen years, not ever, and these last few months of traveling by myself had near unmanned me, more than I knew. This was the first person I’d seen in weeks, and I wasn’t about to let them get away.

“Back off,” they yelled at me, as I kept pace alongside the platform, “You’ll fry and you’ll die if you jump on board.”

“Let me on!” I yelled.

“Hell no,” called the man, “You think I’m crazy?”

“I’m going to jump!”

“Don’t you do it,” he yelled, sounding angry now, “Don’t you be a fool.”

I began to swerve in, trying to build up speed for the leap. I didn’t care if it fried me. I wasn’t going to be able to make it far enough up north on that bike anyways. I didn’t have the strength.

The man yelled something as I jumped, and I landed on the platform, legs dragging behind me on the rocks. I began to slip off, but hands seized me by the back of the jacket and hauled me on board.

“What kind of idiot tries to commit suicide on my draisine?” he demanded, sounding furious. I blinked and rolled onto my back, looked up at the darkened face above me.

“I’m sorry,” I gasped, “I just didn’t want—I couldn’t—“

“Alright, easy there, catch your breath,” he said gruffly. The platform was losing speed now that he was no longer pedaling. Rough hands patted me down, and took the knife blade from my hip. It was my prized butcher’s knife, honed to a paper thin edge, and never before used.

“What are you doing out here in the dark by yourself, anyways?” asked the man, putting the knife in his pocket and moving over to sit on the seat of his bicycle.

“I’m heading north,” I said, pushing myself up into a seated position. “Heading for Canada, or further, if I have to.”

“Canada, hey? Why you going there?”

I felt delirious. The sweat was burning on my skin, drawn from me by the run. What I wouldn't do for a Warren Cocktail, all spice and fizz and full of life. I lay back and stared up the at the dark clouds, the seared sky. I’d only ever seen moon and stars in films, read about them in books. I took them on faith. “Restaurant,” I said. “Want to open a restaurant. Argentinean Steakhouse. Angus beef. Filet Mignon.” I said the words which were like talismans to me. “Prime cut. Tenderloin.”

“You’re one crazy man, hey?” said the stranger. “Hang on, then. Let’s see if we can’t get you a little closer to your goal.”

I heard him get back on the bicycle. Begin to pedal, and with a groan the platform began to shift forward. I thought of Susie and Martin 1 and Martin 2 below the earth, back in the Warren. Thought of all the rock above their heads, and thought of the clouds above mine. I couldn’t see the moon or skies, but I knew, on some basic, primal level, that I was just a little bit closer to them now than I’d ever been.

A love story

2008-11-13T19:34:00.000-08:00

The narrative features funny banter. Romance blossoms between a frustrated brain in a jar and a credulous person, while difficulties they encounter include showing off and falling from grace.

It was October, and leaves were giving up the ghost and preparing for their first and final fall. Along the beach people sat wearing sweaters on blankets, hugging their knees and watching the gray waters crash and ebb away. A pier extended battered and old out into the water, and its length was covered with tents and stalls. The remnants of a fair, the remnants of carnival.

Already the posters about town were beginning to curl and bloat, the ink announcing ‘Mr. Mysterioso’s Magical Marvels’ running and thinning. Everybody in the town had been and gone several times, thrown ping pong balls into cups, watched the clowns leap and tumble, gaped at the sword swallowing girl and the castrati who’s voice could shatter eyeglasses in the crowd. Only Meg hadn’t yet been, waiting and biding her time till she could have the carnival to herself. Only then, as evening turned to dusk, and the final stragglers had walked away, did she approach the pier.

The sky to the west was blazing into velvety reds and crimsons, and a cold wind was blowing in off the ocean, whistling between the stalls and causing the awnings to flap. Meg had been out on the pier many a time, when it was empty; it was her favorite spot to come and sit and puzzle things out, replay the events of the day and try to understand why people laughed when they did, and why they sometimes just stared and turned away. But now it was all changed, made somber and magnificent and mysterious and magical by the fair. She paused shyly like a bride at the door to the church, and then, with a quick breath, moved forward.

The stalls had been closed down, and nobody was about. No clowns walked the length of the broad pier, nobody hawked wares or sliced oranges. Padlocks were in evidence everywhere, and already several trucks had been pulled up to where the pier debouched onto the boardwalk, ready to be loaded up the next morning. But that was fine with Meg. She preferred the company of her thoughts and imagination to real people anyway, and as the shadows lengthened and grew thicker she peopled the pier with all the wondrous folk who might have worked the carnival, dancing and leaping and beckoning her further in.

She stopped before a small candycane tent, and gazed up a the sign over the entrance. “Mr. Mysterioso’s Miraculous Mind” it read. The wind cut past her, blowing her thick brown hair into her face, and she took a moment to pull the strands from her lips and eyelashes. Then she ducked her chin and stepped into the tent, half expecting for somebody to yell at her. Nobody did.

The inside of the tent was dark like the inside of a closet full of winter sweaters. Faint light crept in from under the edges of the tent, but that was all. Shapes loomed up around her, pedestals and boxes, vague dark shadows against blacker shapes. It smelt of chemicals and incense, and made her nose wrinkle. Meg paused and listened, and but for a faint bubbling sound, it was completely silent. She was alone.

“Hello,” somebody said, and Meg let out a cry and stepped back. “Can I help you?”

“I—I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come inside,” she said, looking around for the speaker. “I thought it was empty. The tent, that is.”

“If you thought it was empty,” asked the voice, “Why did you come inside?”

“Because I wanted to see what was in here,” she said, looking down at her feet. “I didn’t want to steal nothing, honest.”

“Well, no harm done,” said the voice. “And nature does abhor a vacuum. Have you come to ask your one question?”

“My one question?” asked Meg. “But I’ve got lots of questions. Why just one?”

“Well, the policy, as proscribed by Mr. Mysterioso, is one question per patron.”

“Oh,” said Meg, “I didn’t know. I can ask you a question?”

“But of course,” said the voice, warm and solicitous. “To answer is my sole desire.”

“Oh, okay,” said Meg, thinking hard. What to ask? So much of the world confused her. Where to start? She could ask why people laughed when she asked her questions. Or why people tended to laugh even harder when she didn’t understand their answers. Or maybe she could ask why seagulls seemed so vicious. Or what it felt like to be a fish.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve got so many questions I can’t pick one. What would you ask?”

“What would I ask?” asked the voice, surprise and pleased. “Nobody has ever asked me that before. Let us see. Tell me about yourself, and I’ll suggest a question.”

“Well, there’s not much to tell. My name’s Meg Carroway, and I live here in town, see. I’m fifteen, but people tell me I’m not too quick for my age. I like the sorts of stuff others don’t, mostly, and the stuff the like I don’t like much at all. Like—football games, or yelling, or drinking and saying things that don’t make much sense.” Meg ran out of steam, and suddenly felt self conscious and embarrassed. “Not much to tell, really.”

“I see. Well. Hrmm.” Meg got the impression that the person would have coughed if they could have. If they were less polite, perhaps. Moving forward, she peered around the gloom, trying to spot him. He sounded nice. “Well, I don’t know either,” the voice finally said. “I’m usually quite good at this. But after all these years I’ve grown used to talking about how to make money, or make somebody fall in love with you. Hrrm.”

“You know how to make people fall in love with each other?” asked Meg, impressed.

“Well, kind of. I can give very sensible advice that usually works,” said the voice, proud.

“Like what?”

“Like, what advice?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it all depends, see. Usually it involves giving flowers and telling the person you like them.”

Meg laughed. “Really? That’s your advice? Seems a bit simple to me.”

“Well, simple sometimes is best,” said the voice.

“True,” said Meg, reflecting. “I guess you’re right there. I like things simple too.” They fell into a companionable silence. “You must be in love with somebody, then,” said Meg, “Given that you have this good advice.”

“Well, no, not exactly,” said the voice. “It’s a bit hard for me.”

“To fall in love?”

“Well, I fall in love quite easily. But it’s hard for others to fall in love with me.?

“Why’s that?”

“Because I have no body.”

“Nobody to love?”

“No, no body.”

“Well, I’ve got nobody either.”

“That’s not true, I can see you standing right there.”

“Well, yes, but I’m alone all the same.”

“Alone in your body?”

“Alone in my body? What? No, I mean I’m alone in general.”

“But in your body. I mean, you have a body.”

“Of course I have a body. Don’t you?”

“No,” said the voice, impatience crackling in it, “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I have no body.”

“Oh,” said Meg, unsure as what to say to that. “Like, you don’t have a body? You’re…. a ghost?”

“No, not a ghost, don’t be silly. I’m a brain in a vat.”

“A what?”

“Brain. Floating in a special compound saline solution designed by Mr. Mysterioso. Didn’t you see the sign above the door?”

“I didn’t understand it.”

“Well, I suppose it’s not absolutely intuitive.”

“I don’t know what you mean, but I don’t think you should let not having a body ruin things for you.”

The voice laughed, a rich and bitter purl of laughter that filled the tent. With a start, Meg realized it had grown quite dark. “Don’t let my lack of body get in the way of finding love? You should take my place, dear miss. Your advice is priceless.”

“Well, no need to laugh at me,” said Meg, face burning. “Everybody’s always laughing at me. I’ll be going, now. Thank you for you time.”

“No, wait,” said the voice, “I’m sorry, I’ve no right to laugh, I’m sorry.”

Meg paused by the doorway. “Are you really just a brain floating in a vat?”

“I might be,” said the voice quietly.

“I never know when people are telling the truth or joking with me,” said Meg, in a comparable tone.

“You could turn on the light and see,” said the voice.

“I could,” said Meg, and stood still. She could hear the wind whistling outside, and knew that soon she’d have to be getting home. She was late already, and would be scolded by her parents. She should be leaving. Getting home. Back to her house, her life, getting ready for school the next day. Instead, she stepped back into the tent. “I could, but maybe I won’t. Maybe it doesn’t matter, really.”

“No?” asked the voice.

“Maybe. I’m not sure. Maybe I’ll just stay awhile longer. Would you mind?”

“No, Meg, I wouldn’t mind at all. That would be quite nice. I was getting ready for another lonely night. Some company would be nice.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” said Meg. She sat down on the wooden floor, the boards of the pier rough against her bum. “I don’t feel like asking any questions though. Do you know any stories?”

“I know a few,” said the voice. “What kind would you like to hear?”

“A love story,” said Meg, and closed her eyes. It was warmer behind her eyelids. “Tell me a love story, please.”

“Very well,” said the voice, and began to recount a tale of a land far away from a time long ago. Meg remained still, and listened, and outside the cold wind blew and the awnings flapped, and the gray ocean crashed and ebbed on the shore.

Xmax Up Up Upped Cubed

2008-11-12T19:07:00.000-08:00

The plot starts because of a misunderstanding about eldritch inscriptions. The protagonist, a tormented but brilliant general who has brass buttons, ends up in a tinsmith's with a caring mentor.

Higher Marshall Five Star Klock paused before the Cliffs of Agate and Doom, and stared down at the tablet in his hand. He frowned at it, scritched at the stubble along the length of his jaw, and then back up at the cliffs. They reared up like curtains descending from Heaven, a beach of black stones about their base. Higher Marshall Five Star Klock was standing on this beach, the ocean booming and booming behind him, washing up to his heels.

Turning, he stared out at where his galleon rode the waves, anchored and waiting. He frowned again, and sighed. There was supposed to be an entrance into the lost and forgotten tomb of Higher Most Up Up Seven Star Lopidi in the cliff face. There was supposed to be a stairway cut into the cliff leading up to it, and the Ultimate Weapon contained within. Higher Marshall Five Star Klock squinted up at the agate cliffs. Nothing.

Scratching his nose, he turned the tablet in his hand upside down. The runes cut into the stone could be read differently if so held, though their meaning became increasingly abstruse. He’d been certain this was the correct interpretation. Had staked two years of research and traveling across the Oceans of Frib to reach this lonely shore. The Great War that Never Ended would be unrecognizable by this point. Positions would have changed. Territories shifted, new commanders appointed. Uniforms with different colors, maybe, new and more fashionable cuts.

He’d have to go back to it empty handed. Higher Marshall Five Star Klock had been standing on the beach for two long and lonely hours, unwilling to admit his mistake. But there was nothing for it. Everybody on the galleon was most definitely well aware of his failure. Had probably been watching him through their telescopes, sniggering into their knitting as they waited. The most illustrious and successful Higher Marshall Five Star in recent memory, and here he stood like a putz.

In a sudden fit of anger he turned and chucked the three thousand year old tablet into the waves. It felt good for about a minute, and then he sighed once more and waded out into the water to retrieve it.

A year passed. Higher Marshall Four Star Klock was back in the Third Home City of Illumpti, recently demoted following a protracted investigation into his misappropriation of funds and failure. He’d had to trade in his big hat for a slightly smaller one, and the lack of weight on his head irked him. Walking through the streets, he fiddled at his new uniform. Two weeks and he’d have to go back to the Front, or one of them, to oversee the planning of the implementation of the incipience of strategizing over how to think about the next step in declaring an attack. Bollocks.

What he hated, more than the small hat, were the large brass buttons down the front of his navy blue jacket. Each bore the face of a Higher Uppity Up Up Ten Star Senex, each of whom had just spent the past three months denigrating him. He picked and plucked at them and then, in a sudden bout of rebellion, ducked into a tinsmith shop, determined to have them replaced, consequences be damned.

The shop was low ceilinged, dusky and dark, gloomy and dim, poorly lit, hard to see in. Tin cups hung from the ceiling and tinkled like wind chimes. The whole place smelled suspiciously of pickle juice. Suddenly leery, Higher Marshall Four Star Klock paused, considered stepping back out. But a familiar form arrested his escape. It was Higher Upper Xmax Up Up Upped Cubed Galaxy Star Jibooku. His old mentor, the most revered man in the world, the originator of war, its most dexterous practicator. The old man was bent over an old tin plate, examining an etching on its reverse side.

“Higher Upper Xmax Up Up Upped Cubed Galaxy Star Jibooku,” said Higher Marshall Four Star Klock, drawing himself to attention as he did so. Higher Upper Xmax Up Up Upped Cubed Galaxy Star Jibooku turned around, peered through the gloom, the dim interior of the store, and his craggy old face split into a warm smile.

“Well, well, well,” said Higher Upper Xmax Up Up Upped Cubed Galaxy Star Jibooku. “If it isn’t my young protégé, Higher Marshall Five Star Klock.”

Higher Marshall Four Star Klock felt his face color. “Actually, sir, I have been demoted to Four Star rank.”

“Oh?” asked Higher Upper Xmax Up Up Upped Cubed Galaxy Star Jibooku. “I am sorry to hear that. Your fault?”

“Yes sir,” said Klock. “I failed to find the Ultimate Weapon. Two years and precious resources wasted on my account.”

“Ah well,” said Higher Upper Xmax Up Up Upped Cubed Galaxy Star Jibooku. “There’s always another day in which to fight and win glory. Tell me, what do you think of this plate? Winsome?”

Higher Marshall Four Star Klock peered at it. “Yes sir. Very winsome.”

“Oh good,” said Higher Upper Xmax Up Up Upped Cubed Galaxy Star Jibooku. “I do so like things that win. I’ll buy it. Come over for dinner when you regain your rank?”

“Of course, sir,” said Klock. “It would be an honor. Unless death finds me first.”

“With your shield or on it,” said Higher Upper Xmax Up Up Upped Cubed Galaxy Star Jibooku. “Right? Am I right? Eh? On your shield or on it? Get it?”

“Of course sir. Very good, sir. Well, congratulations on the plate. I’m off to war then, I suppose.”

“Right-oh! Bon chance, and better luck finding the Ultimate Weapon next time.”

“Thank you, sir. Most kind. Most, most kind. To me, that is.”

“Kabosh it. Not a tittle or a thing to be considerated. You’ll do fine! Now, off with you. Go do some warmongering.”

“Ok. Ciao.”

Higher Upper Xmax Up Up Upped Cubed Galaxy Star Jibooku smiled vaguely, raised a hand in parting, and turned around to continue examine the plate. Higher Marshall Four Star Klock stepped back out into the sunshine, buttons forgotten, and trained his eyes on the closest horizon, and smiled.

A nasty sheikh up!

2008-11-11T14:57:00.000-08:00

In a landscape lost in mist, a sheikh encounters shelter from a storm as the story begins. As the narrative unfolds, the protagonist meets a gentleman scholar with a throaty voice, and they wind up in a bazaar with secrets revealed in the dark.

The air was in revolt, its very substance rendered substantial, diffuse and pale. Plumes of fog whorled and ebbed and flowed about the Sheikh as he stumbled forward, lost and alone. Pillars of shadow would resolve themselves into columns of weathered stone, spires that ended in the kind of flat surfaces favored by desert wise men, by those who would parse their flesh with pain and privation to earn wisdom, understanding, death. A maze of geography and obfuscation that mirrored the Sheikh’s confusion, the loss of his mental bearings.

Through the pastel grays and glistening whites he staggered, his mind racing like some great engine that roars and trembles impotently, a key component broken. He had no recollection as to how he came here, where he was, where he was going. There was no immediate past before him, nothing beyond the past few minutes, though his body was weary as if he had been wandering for days. It was this lack of knowledge that scared him, he who had always been chief in surety and minister of wisdom.

A storm was coming. Its harsh tones could be heard above the mist, as if it were gathering its forces, marshaling its phalanxes of gales, sharpening the edges of its lightning strikes like the Grim Reaper might run a whetstone down the length of his scythe. The air crackled with electricity, the fog restive because of it. Shelter, thought the Sheikh desperately, Maslow’s pyramid of needs, security of body.

A cliff face reared before him, manifesting like a wall of serried shadow through the undulating waves of mist. Hands outstretched he hurried forward, and found that the base of the cliff was pocked with cave entrances.

“In here,” called a voice, sounding like the passage of a river through chthonic rivers, and the Sheikh turned as a man blind and guided and ran toward its source. A man stood within a cave whose entrance was low and wide like the mouth of a toad. “In here,” said the man, and stepped into the deeper shadows and disappeared.

“Who are you?” cried the Sheikh, faltering to a stop. Outside the cave the winds were beginning to shriek, tearing the mist into jagged streaks. “Where am I?”

“Follow,” bade the voice, “Follow me.”

The Sheikh stood panting. Where in past hours he might have felt the flash of outrage, indignation over his questions being ignored, now he simply lowered his head and struggled forward. Voices were in the depths of the cave, a soft susurrus of whispers and laughter, though all was still dark. The clink of objects being weighed on a scale, of coins being dropped into a bag.

Onward the Sheikh stumbled, reaching up with both hands to straighten his kafiyah. Shapes were resolving themselves from the darkness, the outlines of people wandering between market stalls which were arrayed against the cave walls. Shadow people buying goods the could not be seen

“You have strayed far from your path,” said the throaty voice, and the Sheikh turned to look at his guide. Though the cave was without light, his eyes had grown accustomed to the dark, and he saw a face ashen and noble, generous of bone and with broad eyes.

“I have, yes,” agreed the Sheikh. “Last I remember I was within my home. Now, all is strange and distant. Where am I? Who are you?”

The man took him by the elbow and guided him forward as one might an elder bereft of his wits. Never had the Sheikh been so handled, but again his customary anger remained quiescent. “Come,” said his guide. There is not much time.”

A few steps and they were before a stall, canvas awning hanging low over the table of goods. Bric-a-brac, trash and broken toys. The guide reached out with one hand and stirred the relics of childhoods past, looking up at the Sheikh with bright eyes. “Does anything seem of interest to you?”

“No, of course not,” said the Sheikh, and then paused. A long second, and then he reached out tentatively and took up a broken wooden sword, its upper third snapped off and long gone. Turning it, he saw the painted mark across the hilt, the curlicue of black ink that he had drawn himself over sixty years ago. “This…” he said, voice soft in wonder. “I had not thought to see this again.

The guide said nothing.

Memories of arid summers chasing friends down alleys, leaping over the chasms that separated one roof from the next. Enacting legends, composing new ones. Friends and battles, screams and laughter. Everything washed out by time, but there, the firmament to his sense of self

“Lost,” he said. “This was lost.”

“No,” said the guide, taking it from him, pulling it from his hands. “Stolen. By your brother, that morning.”

“My brother,” said the Sheikh, eyes growing blind. “Mustafa?” His younger brother. Precocious and fierce, lonely and long dead. Found broken and still in a street, bloodied where he had fallen five stories from an ill considered leap.

“Found by his side, broken and bathed in his blood,” said the guide. “Lethal emulation.”

“No,” said the Sheikh. “It was a senseless accident.

“No,” said the guide, and tossed the wooden blade back onto the pile of trash. “Come.”

On they walked, cross to another stall. A long beam of wood crossed above them, and from it hung bodies by the neck, spinning slowly as if caught in a cross breeze. The Sheikh threw up his hands, would have fallen back had not his guide caught him by the shoulder and directed his gaze to the third body to the left.

A young woman, olive skinned, face bloated, eyes bulging. Beautiful once, she had been, and her voice, her voice could have stilled a riot, silenced guns, stolen hearts. It had stolen his. Slowly she spun, hung from the neck, eyes trained on his face.

“Sofia,” he whispered. He felt scalded by white, reduced to two dimensions.

“She hung herself, after,” said the guide, leaning in close as if in deference to the dead who hung over the stall and watched them. “Hung herself but three months after you were done.

The Sheikh remembered her demure protestations, her half hearted struggle against his tender attentions. How she had cried after, overwhelmed by the experience. He had not seen her after that night, not wishing to mislead her in thinking he was interested in a relationship.

“Not for love, did she hang herself,” whispered his guide. “But for shame and horror.”

The Sheikh could bear her eyes no longer, the cold malice that gleamed in their depths, and turning he ran further into the cave, passing through the crowds of shadows. He ran until he could breath no more, and stopped, leaning over to plant his hands on his knees, great belly hanging over his belt and surging in violent heaves.

“You can run, but you can’t hide,” said his guide in what sounded like Teutonic accents.

“What manner of place is this? I am bedeviled!” cried the Sheikh, falling back from his guide.

“Why, tis but an innocent cave into which you have stumbled while seeking refuge from the storm,” said his guide, grinning like a Cheshire cat.

“But these things that have been revealed up and onto me!” cried the Sheikh. “How is this possible?”

“Not all that glitters is gold,” said his guide slyly, running a finger up and down the length of his nose as if he wished to saw it off.

“What?” asked the Sheikh.

“Nevermind. Come on, more to see, don’t dilly dally.” The guide grabbed him roughly by the arm and jerked him to the next stall. Half terrified, the Sheikh sought to avert his eyes, and saw instead that the bare board contained a mere pile of coins.

“What’s this?” asked the Sheikh. “Money for sale?”

“Well, no,” admitted the guide. “Do you see how much money is before you?”

The Sheikh leaned forward and counted quickly with a practiced and beady eye. Money always brought out the hawk in him. “About… five hundred rupees.”

“A paltry sum, no?” asked the guide, leaning back on his heels and tapping his chin.

“Sure,” said the Sheikh. “I own much, much, much more money than that.”

“Five hundred rupees. The cost of a life?”

“Alas!” cried the Sheikh, comprehension dawning on him like a falling pile of bricks.

"Yes, quite,” said his guide severely. “I can’t believed you paid so little to have Sheikh Ahmed killed. Honestly. You could have shown largesse if only in your most disgusting deeds. But even there did you seek redemption through generosity.”

“But nobody was to know! What is this place?” The Sheikh, enraged and terrified, grabbed hold of his guide’s shirt and began to shake him violently. So violently did he shake him that the man fell to pieces, his head rolling off and onto the floor, his body rattling apart within his clothing. His capacity for being shocked not yet exhausted, the Sheikh released the guide’s clothing and watched with wide eyes as it all collapsed into a pile. Leaning down, he took up the man’s head. It had become a skull.

Screaming, he lobbed it underarm away from himself, and began to run again, running toward the cave entrance, away from this horrid bazaar and the dark secrets it revealed. He passed endless shadow figures, eyes riveted on the white blur without, until finally he emerged into the fog and storm.

The Sheikh managed but a few steps, and then the wind that razored the mist apart did likewise to him. Even as he dissolved, he finally recalled his last memory: his lying on his bed, surrounded by friends and relatives… waiting to die!

Grind Show

2008-09-08T13:38:00.000-07:00

Ffrogwhist will for the next couple of weeks be put to a very different use. No longer will it be a collection of daily writing exercises, but instead a chronicle of my attempts to write a new novel. Not entirely new, to be clear, but more a rehash of an old one. Grind Show. Demon hunters racing and battling out against the forces of darkness across the desolate landscape of the Mojave desert. I wrote some 25,000 words last time, racing bullet fast through the chapters, throwing shotguns, car chases, rock bands and merciless bounty hunters around like a desperate juggler attempting to keep the attention of a waning crowd.

Now I'm going to try my hand at it again. Not simply pick up where I left off, but rather go back, right to the root, the first Chapter or two, and see if I can do it right this time. It's to be more of a commercial novel, something that can actually sell; but that doesn't mean it's any easier to write. Something that became clear over the year I worked at Penguin is that the big selling 'commercial' novels are every part as challenging to write as the more literary ones.

Why? Consider Howard and his creation, Conan. There have been hundreds of Conan knock offs, but nobody has achieved the fame and excellence that Howard did. The reason is because he believed in his creation, poured his heart and soul into it. Conan walks and breathes and glowers and roars on his pages, where in the other books he never manages to be anything but a two dimensional hunk of muscle and steel. Same with Lovecraft; despite his at times terrible dialogue, purple prose and contrived endings, there's something about his body of walk that has captivated and mesmerized generations of readers, to the point that today he is still actively read, with new collections being released yearly with forwards by the likes of Joyce Carol Oates and China Mieville. Lovecraft believed in his creations, and thus others are swayed.

So if you're going to write something, you have to care about it. Or people will notice, and toss is aside. That's why people who decide to write a 'commercial' novel for a quick buck rarely succeed; their audiences can hear the silent sneer, detect the patronizing tone, and kick the book to the curb.

There's my challenge. Write something fast paced, compelling and fun that I'd want to read, something dark and harrowing and sarcastic and smart. I've already edited some 5,000 words into the beginning of the new book, lifted from the first draft. I'm going to go from there, day in, day out, and see where it takes me.

Wish me luck!

I love meeting because of the moon!

2008-09-05T08:31:00.001-07:00

The story begins in Ellis Island, when a sullen, slightly sultry sword-wielding mechanic and a gentleman meet because of the moon. It is about affirming life in the midst of death. The antagonist is motivated because of an addiction.

We will be seeing more of Flamboje.

2008-09-04T10:15:00.000-07:00

This story begins as it ends, with a high-spirited tourest. In a school for would-be inventors, a secretary and an expat struggle against the odds and encounter building a family, a deadly competition, and a carny who is motivated because they want to understand how the world works. The text features the social intimacies of tribes or camps.

Page 1

You are a high-spirited tourest. Your yips and chirrups are the delight of the aether. Currently without host, you decide to place a fortunate soul under your aegis. If you wish to place a 19^th century dandy under your aegis, turn to Page 43, if you would prefer a salacious Roman Centurion, turn to Page 329, or turn to Page 92 if you would prefer a 21^st centurty secretary.

Page 92

The secretary is at ease behind a faux-mahogany desk outside an Imperial office. She is filing her nails and keeping a weather eye on her Inbox. She is prolix, and hard nosed. Her day seems quiet. If you would like to have a terrorist cell attack the office building affording her a chance at heroism, turn to Page 33. If you would prefer to have her meet her future husband tonight, turn to Page 21. If you would prefer to have her fired and become caught up with an insane expat who believes he’s a tiger, turn to Page 233

Page 233

Roxor the Expat takes The Secretary by the hand as they race down the dingy hallway. “It is here that we shall learn the truth about the Universe,” he informs her, “And divine the means to realize our potential.” The Secretary is dismayed, but remains calm, professional. She asks for clarification, but Roxor the Expat simply roars at her in a tigerish fashion. If you would like her to slap Roxor, turn to Page 53. If you would like for her to kick him in the back with her high heeled foot, turn to page 7. If you would prefer that she internalize her rage, turn to page -493.

Page 7

Roxor the Expat roars in pain and rage as The Secretary’s heel digs into the small of his back, sending him stumbling. He is but a small expat, however, and though his heart is great he is unable to reciprocate. “I apologize,” he says, “Let me be more specific. We are here to learn the social intimacies of tribes or camps, and shall do so within this school for would-be inventors. They are an eclectic lot, and like shattered prisms we shall be able to use them to see the world in manners skewed and unexpected.” The Secretary nods, her fatalist streak flaring. Turn to page 278, unless you would prefer to turn to Page 90. Do not turn to Page 79.

Page 79

Turn back, do not read on. Turn to Page 341 now. Turn. Go back. Your mother sucks –

Page 341

The Secretary and Roxor the Expat pause before the iron golem. It is piecing together two other golems, one of its size, the other shorter by far. “Doldrums result until family is mine,” it intones. “What he means,” says Roxor, “Is-“ He stops when The Secretary glares at him. “I am creating a camp,” intones the golem, within which I shall be King. I shall rule and in so doing know myself complete.” “How unimaginative of you,” says The Secretary, and turns towards –

Page 79

Turn back, you have been warned, curiousity munged the –

Page 412

“I see,” crowed the moustachioed space pirate, wielding his laser rapier with panache, “You wish to challenge my rule. Well, Flamboje, there can be only one captain of the Jolie Roget, and you shall have to fight for the spot.”

“Avast and bodega,” cried Flamboje, drawing his thunderpipe, “I fear not the swaying of the—

Page 55

Moaning, the man leaned down and kissed him on the –

Page 79

I know you and what you seek within this book, and I shall have your soul before you reach this tale’s end, no matter how fast you change from page to page –

Page 982

The Secretary laughed, delighted, and reclined on the divan. “But Roxor, that’s what the bishop said!” Everybody laughed, turning to look at each other as they did so, their hilarity confirmed in each other’s eyes. “Excuse me, The Secretary, but I have a theory,” ventured Iub the Dwarf, “A theory that might unify Einstein’s General Relativity with String Theory. I have tentatively dubbed it M-Theory, and it goes a little something like this…” “Oh, do be quiet, Iub,” said The Secretary, “Do you not see that you are spoiling our little gathering? We have formed an impromptu tribe here, a camp of friends who want nothing better than to relax in sophisticated company.”

Everybody laughed again. Iub’s face flushed, and he turned, sticking his hands into his armpits. “I would that I could, I would that I could,” he muttered, gazing longingly at the circus that was visible through the window.

Page 79

You are trapped.

Page 79

There is no where you can turn to.

Page 79

There is no more escape. All entries are become me.

Page 79

Give me the high-spirited tourest and you can leave. Give it to me.

There. Ah, yes. Ah.

THE END

Matobo the Croc Killer

2008-09-03T06:19:00.001-07:00

The text starts as a union organizer encounters things that go SPLAT while in a library. The overall narrative is a sports story and the motivation behind the major plot events is: because of guilt.

Lionel the union organizer was expanding. He'd been sitting there, right, reading USA Today or People magazine or something, checking out the pics of Jessica Simpson, when his belt began to cut into his belly. His cheeks began to puff out, and his shoes to feel tight. Huffing, he pushed away from the desk, thinking: gas? But everything was swelling. Reaching down he undid his belt, and rose to his feet, panic hitting him hard. What in Sam Hill?

Around him other people were beginning to puff up too, puff up real bad, looking mighty unsighty. Like they each and every one of them had an air tube stuck in their mouths, the kind you get at gas stations to fill up your tires, and each were being piped up full of air. People's eyes were bulging, necks swelling, hands expanding like kitchen gloves filled with water.

"What in Sam Hill!" said Lionel. He staggered towards the Librarian's counter, but she wasn't in sight. Outside, through the plate glass entrance doors, he could see a large group of gorillas all laughing and shrieking and slapping each other on the back. Lionel blinked, felt the buttons on his shirt begin to pop off.

"What in Sam Hill!" he roared, outraged. Damned apes, out there laughing while he was on the verge of going pop. There must have been some thirty of them out there, a few large old silver backs, a horde of smaller males, and one or two chimp looking ones rolling around on their backs, smacking their feet together in monkey claps.

Lionel turned to the other people who were rolling around on the floor, or mewling to each other. "Apes," he said, and tried to point. He had significantly reduced flexibility by this point. "Outside, laughing. Apes."

Nobody listened. Close by, an elderly man who had expanded too quickly, his parchment wrinkly skin distending, went SPLAT. Red stuff went everywhere, viscera and bones bouncing off shelving. "Sam Hill!" cried Lionel, back away, "Sam Hill!"

The hooting and hollerin' from outside grew louder, and he turned to see two of the gorillas high five each other while a third drew a mark in chalk on the sidewalk. Behind him he heard another SPLAT, but he didn't turn. The gorillas were falling over with the sheer violence of their hilarity.

But sadness crept into Lionel's heart. He'd been to the zoo as a kid, and had seen the monkey house, visited the maccacs, but nothing had hit him as hard as the gorilla cage. There had been one gorilla in there, a threadbare guy called Matobo the Croc Killer, with photographs of him as a young tough, all puffed up with muscles tearing a crocodile in two. Looking at Matobo, Lionel had felt like a connection had but for a moment been forged between the two of them. Matobo's eyes were deep and soft like cups of chocolate puddin'. He'd stared deep into those twin wells of sadness, and shook his head. Was his name really Matobo? Had he ever really killed a Croc? Even if he had, had he even wanted to?

Lionel lowered his head, or tried. His neck was enveloped in flesh. He felt like he couldn't breath. The gorillas were shrieking and covering their faces with their feet. But Lionel didn't mind. Didn't resent them. He thought of Matobo, and lowered his head.

Behind him somebody went SPLAT.

And then again.

Scissor Men and Tarantula Blades

2008-09-02T13:02:00.000-07:00

The text starts as an otherwise bumbling person who is competent at one specific thing encounters a marriage of necessity while in a war. The overall narrative is about the uncanny and the motivation behind the major plot events is: because they are under a curse that forces their actions.

"Fuck fuck fuck," moaned Boribur, wiping his hair back out of his face for the millionth time. The sun was going to set, and soon Moki would launch his army down out of the attic to come swarm and swamp him here in the basement. He had, what, maybe fifteen minutes left? Glancing up at the window, he tried to gauge how much longer there was till the sun set by the crimson light pouring in and setting the dancing dust motes on fire. Fifteen, maybe twenty. Not enough.

The basement was huge. Vast. Larger than an airplane hangar, bigger than the biggest building in the world. They'd all been shrunk to the size of thumbs by the ArchMagus, barely a couple of inches tall, and now everything was cyclopean, of a scale absurd, so large that he felt agoraphobic. The attic was another land, up two flights of interminable stairs. But down it would come Moki's army, in whatever form it took, coming down to tear him apart.

"Focus," he whispered angrily to himself, and stared at the huge pair of scissors that lay gleaming before him. He'd known about the box before the spell, before this ghastly tournament had commenced, and had raced down here as fast as he could, falling from step to step, and then wriggling under the basement door to enter the gloomy basement. Had cast a spell to tip the cardboad box over, and been rewarded by a silver waterfall of falling scissors. The perfect material with which to construct a fighting force. Perfect, if he could but get his act together.

Several constructs, miniature golems, stood assembled, prepared to do battle. Already Boribur was shaking like a leaf, drained and expended, but this was his specialty, what he was good at--the construction of machinae. Eight men composed of blades and handles, walking dervishes of gleaming edges, and two large spiders, each leg a scissor blade, the central knot a mass of intertwined metal. Ten soldiers. A good start, but not enough. And worse yet--he didn't even know if he would be able to animate them properly, command them into battle. What use would they be if they simply stood there and watched him get hacked to pieces?

It had been Larissa's idea, but Moki had taken to it quickly enough, dragging the reluctant Boribur in along with him. Kill the ArchMagus, take him by surprise, and become the youngest graduates ever. Gain access to the forbidden spells, the ArchMagus' staff, fame and riches and power. Surprise, three against one, no problem. Larissa, excited and charismatic and undeniable had wooed them over, stroking Moki's ego and bullying Boribur, until they'd all agreed to go along.

Closing his eyes, Boribur forced himself to channel the magic, shape it with spells and motions, discipline it with a muttered mantra and weave it about the scissors. Such a trivial spell, but there was only so much magic available to him at this size, his very anima shrunken along with his body. He felt the metal grow soft, malleable, felt it curl and bend and shape itself anew. Sweat broke out on his forehead, and when he finally opened his eyes, he saw a ninth bladed soldier standing before him perfectly balanced. He wanted to retch, to sit down and pass out. But there was no time.

"Well done, Boribur!" came a voice, piercing and amused, and he half jumped out of his skin. Larissa. She was standing but thirty yards away, hands on her hips, alone. "Now, before you try to attack me, just listen."

"What, listen to you again? Not likely. You're the reason we're being forced to kill each other as is."

"Ah, but think: you kill me, expend what power you have left, and Moki will wipe the floor with you."

Boribur narrowed his eyes. "What choice do I have?"

"We could join forces. Together we can defeat Moki. Alone, we've got no chance."

It was true. Moki was the best of the three, though Larissa was perhaps smarter. He simply had more power, a greater intellect, a more vivid imagination. It was why Boribur was so close to pissing his pants.

"And what'd stop you from killing me after?"

"Nothing," said Larissa, smiling sweetly, hands behind her back. "But there's nothing to stop you either. So what do you think? Risk being my ally, or certain death in... ten minutes?"

Boribur scowled, looked at his creations, where they stood gleaming in the basement's gloaming. Nine scissor men, two tarantula blades. "All right, fine. You power them, I direct them. You don't get to have any control."

Larissa chewed her bottom lip for a moment, and then nodded. "Fine."

Her capitulation made him even more uncertain. "Fine then," he agreed belligerently. "I'll try and shape a few more. Unless you want to try and help..?"

"No, I'll save my power for the animation. Plus you were always the best at golem making. Better even then Moki."

She was buttering him up, Boribur knew it, but still he couldn't resist a flush of pleasure. He nodded curtly, and then turned back to the remaining pile of scissors. Ten minutes left. Keeping a wary eye on Larissa, he got to work.

***

Their forces were assembled. Eleven scissor men, tall and angular, moving forward with jerky precision, the points of their feet digging into the wooden floor of the basement as they advanced on the door. Boribur and Larissa were each riding on one of the tarantula blades, the seats uncomfortable, knots of metal digging into their butts, but the ride was smoother, a ripple of legs moving them forwards, an undulation of sharpness. A small force, compact and tough. Time to seek out Moki, to see what he had devised. Time to engage, for night had fallen.

The door was levered open by the scissor men, vast and nearly two yards thick. It groaned and shivered by small degrees, till finally momentum caught it and it swung out, a ponderous sweep that would have knocked them flat had they remained in its way. Beyond, the stairs. They approached, and began to ascend; no problem for the scissor men and tarantula blades, who simply sank the tips of their feet into the wood and climbed.

Boribur held on, growing nauseous as his tarantula blade flowed up and up and up, the thok thok thok of its legs punctuating the otherwise smooth climb. The basement had been dark, but the house was darker yet, bereft of even the dubious benefit of the windows that had looked out into the night. Up they climbed, powered by Larissa's will, till they reached the entrance hall and paused, their forces puddled at the edge of the top step.

"Should we climb to meet him on the steps, or await him here?" asked Boribur, swallowing repeatedly to settle his stomach.

"Hmm. Our forces have great stability on the stairs. Probably better than his. But from here we could see them coming and plan a violent defense."

Thok. Boribur turned to see which of his scissor men had moved, and then startled at the sight of a dart as long as he was tall embedded in the floor next to his tarantula blade. It had appeared from nowhere, its angle nearly perpindicular. He looked up. The darkness of the hall was vast, but somewhere overhead something flew.

"We're under attack!" he yelled, and suddenly his forces were moving forward, galvanized by his will. They raced towards the stairs leading to the first floor, but Larissa was yelling, pointing at a megalithic armchair. For a moment Boribur didn't understand, and then he willed their forces to swerve to the left and scuttle under the chair and into safety.

"Damn," said Larissa, combing her hair out of her eyes with her fingers, "You've got to admit, that's impressive."

"What," said Boribur, willing his tarantula to creep right up the edge of their cover and then peer out at the dark sky, "An assasination attempt? That's not impressive, that's cowardly." But it was impressive. He'd not even thought of a pre-emptive strike. Had that playing dart hit him, it would have all finished right then. As it was, they were pinned.

"Well, we're trapped. Unless you can fashion a canopy for us?"

"That's mean sacrificing a scissor man, maybe two or three."

"Well, what choice do we have?"

"We could wait for him to attack us here."

"Under the chair?" She consided the option. "A bit ignomious, isn't it?"

"Fine, fine," he snapped, and closed his eyes. Reached out with both hands, as if grasping the matter of the universe, and clenched his hands into claws. Moved them, directed them, murmuring and muttering as he did so. He could feel the fabric of two scissormen unravel, easier now for their first manipulation, and directed them towards each tarantula. For a moment the thought occured to him--kill her--and then he dismissed it. He didn't want to be alone. Not yet, not with Moki out there.

"Well done," said Larissa, looking up at the lattice work of gleaming metal coccooning her on her mount. "Should do the trick."

Sweat was dripping from Boribur's nose. "Yes, well. If it doesn't, won't matter. Those darts look like an instant kill. Ready?"

She nodded, and with a final cautious glance up at the dark sky of the hallway, their force emerged, thok thok thokking into the open.

Both Larissa and Boribur craned their necks back, staring up into the gloom. There--movement--and then thok, a second dart plunked down right next to Boribur's tarantula.

"They're not very good at--" began Larissa, and then let out a cry of pain. The cocoon over her tarantula had suddenly spouted a dart, its point sinking through a gap to embed itself right into her arm. "Oh fuck!" she screamed, and slowly edged herself down and pulled herself off it. "I thought you made these things to keep the darts off of us, you bleeding idiot!" She clasped her hand to her wound, which was pulsing blood.

"You okay? Larissa?" Boribur urged his tarantula forward.

"No, I'm not okay. I just got stabbed by a huge dart right through the arm. God damn that hurts." She closed her eyes, squirmed and bounced her knees up and down for a moment, and then opened her eyes with a gasp. "All right. I'm fine. I'm fine. Let's just hurry up. I'm feeling faint already."

"Okay, let's go," said Boribur as a fourth dart clanged on the caccoon above his head and went bouncing and spinning off into the darkness. "Let's go find that asshole!"

The nine scissormen and the two tarantulas surged toward the stairs, which they began to ascend in their methodical way. Up and across, up and across, Boribur and Larissa heaving and swaying with each step. The stairs seemed to extend forever into the darkness above them, each three times as tall as they were, and soon Boribur was feeling nauseaus again, clinging to the cold metal about him for dear life.

***

They gained the first floor. A pause, the scissormen bunching together, both Boribur and Larissa peering around for more trouble, and then they espied water flooding out from under one of the doors to their left.

"That doesn't look good," said Boribur.

The water began to flow together, forming a thick puddle, then a translucent mound, and then it lifted itself up and became a fluid pseudopod.

"Fuck me," said Boribur, and sent his scissor men forward to attack it. They jerked forwards, limbs scything, and when they met the watery tentacle began to lash at its corpus. Their attacks caused droplets to fly, but failed to stop it. "It's heading for you," cried Boribur, sensing the tentacle's direction. "Move!"

Larissa's tarantula began to stalk rapidly away, but the water was faster. Even though it grew attenuated as it extended out towards her, it was able to close the distance in a flash. "Larissa!" cried Boribur, but it was too late. The watery tip sloshed through the metallic cacoon, and suspended her within it. She began to flail and attempt to swim out, but it simply followed her movements. The tarantula began to circle and stop, her attention faltering, and Boribur concentrated on directing all the scissormen at attacking the pseudopod at its base.

Futility. Within a minute Larissa stopped. Hung suspended in the watery globule, hair floating about her face like weeds. The scissormen continued to hack, and then almost all of them collapsed, falling apart like so much detritus. Larissa was dead. A sudden, fierce and unexpected anguish seized him, and then he bottled it up and focused on his failing mount.

With a gasp, Boribur directed all of his energies at maintaining his tarantula together. The pseudopod began to retract, leaving Larissa to lie sodden in the metallic folds of the collapsed construct. Boribur leaned forwards, scowling, and his spider fled. Fled across the landing, towards the stairs that would lead up. Up to the attic. Up to Moki.

Thok thok thok, went his tarantula, and for a moment, looking over his shoulder, he thought he was going to suffer the same fate as Larissa. But no. He had enough of a headstart, and panic leant his spider wings. Up they surged, and the glistening rope of water was left behind to pat and prod at the steps blindly. Swaying and jostling they ascended, and they he was at the attic door.

The tarantula extended a leg, and pushed the door open slowly. No explosions, attacks, ambushes. Just darkness, dust cloaked and deep.

"Moki?" called Boribur, feeling the fool, the child, the amateur. "Are you in there? You killed Larissa. Just you and me now."

Fear was falling from him, leaving him tired. With Larissa gone, he realized that a need to impress had also left him. Just him and Moki now, and he remembered their first days studying under the ArchMagus together, before they had become rivals, before this had all become such a serious endeavour. Just two kids revelling in their newfound abilities.

Boribur urged his tarantula forward. It entered the attic, and he was glad to see that it wasn't quite as dark as he'd feared. Cases and boxes reared up like boxes on both sides, but the center was clear. Moki stood in the middle of the floor, out in the open, hands behind his back.

"Hello, Boribur," he called out. "Ready?"

"What are you going to do?" asked Boribur, suddenly nervous again, his indifference evaporating. Where were Moki's men? What was he going to attack with?

"Oh Bori," said Moki, shaking his head. "You never could think outside the box, could you? Always connecting the dots, and never trying to loop them. I'm going to take control of your tarantula and kill you with it."

And like that the battle was joined. Boribur felt Moki's will envelope him, and he threw up a wall, a thick, impenetrable wall with which to defend his creation, all the while urging it forward. If he could reach Moki and impale him before he lost control of his mount, he would win. Simple.

But Moki was powerful, and hadn't expended his energies in creating a legion of constucts. His will was tenacious, unpredictable, and came at Boribur's defenses in sharp bursts like arrow strikes. Boribur was halfway there when a chink opened up in his defense, and Moki was in.

The tarantula stopped. Quivered. And then it raised one of its legs, reversed its angle, and plunged it up and into Boribur's chest.

Boribur looked down at where the broad, oily blade stuck into him. Blood was welling up, thick and dark, pouring out along its gleaming haft, running down his front.

"I'm sorry, Boribur. But as the ArchMagus said, only one of us gets out of this alive." Moki was walking up to where he sat, still controlling the tarantula. Boribur wanted to sag, to keel over, but the blade held him upright. His sight was growing dark. Spots were flooding his vision, and his breath was coming in hitches. Suprisingly, there was very little pain. Just a spreading numbness.

"No hard feelings, eh? You would have done the same. If you had been capable." Moki looked up at him, and the tarantula slowly lowered itself until its belly was flat against the floor. It withdrew the blade with a sucking sound, and Boribur toppled forwards. Moki caught him, and then lay him on the floor.

"Easy now. Don't fight it. It will be over soon."

Boribur hitched his breath. He wasn't mad. Moki had always been better. He'd known he was dead. Had had no hope till Larissa had joined him. That had been good. Larissa being on his side. Against Moki. Larissa. He blinked his eyes, couldn't open them. He saw Larissa then, waiting for him, standing impatiently with her arms crossed. I'm coming, he thought. I'm almost there. Wait for me. But then she turned and walked away into the darkness and disappeared.

Ms. Haversham Malloy saves the Ragin' Maccac

2008-09-01T14:27:00.001-07:00

The story begins in a penny arcade, when a personal secretary and a starving but enthusiastic student meet because of marriage vows. It is a sports story. The protagonist is not motivated because no one saved them, so they have sworn to save others.

The penny arcade was on fire. Flames, flames of hot hot heat were licking and surging and crackling and purring as they burned the shithole down. Mrs. Pacman was a coruscation of blue and green fire, Double Dragon’s screen had exploded outward in a hail of shattered shuriken stars, and zombies too dumb to die kept on clawing at the screen of Shoot ‘Em Up House of the Dead IV as the plastic blue and red shotguns melted and twisted away.

At the back, where the smoke wasn’t as thick, the toxic fumes less pungent, Ms. Haversham Malloy was wielding a crowbar and trying to save her fiancé. He was a bare knuckle cage fighter, and was trapped in the illegal fightpit that Mr. Bobbalom McGee had setup in order to finance his daughter’s college education. Ragin’ Maccac was trapped in the pit, the trapdoor locked, and hot hot tears were coursing down Ms. Haversham Malloy’s face as she sought to bust open the lock.

“Get out of here, Havvy,” bellowed Ragin’ Maccac, pacing below her in the cool dampness of the pit. “I’ll be fine. Get the firemen to dig me out. And if I die, if it’s my fate to perish, then bury me next to my own sweet ma and weep a tear for me then. But save yourself!”

“Oh shut up,” grunted Havvy, putting her back into ripping the lock. “Shut your trap because you ain’t helping me none.”

“You’ve got a fine life ahead of you,” said Ragin’ Maccac, “A life of tranquil beauties and sweet sweet sorrows. Go back to your CEO, your pens and your Dictaphones, your appointment books and quiet joys.”

Havvy let out a rip of a grunt, and then began to cough into the crook of her elbow. The smoke was thick and fierce, and it was starting to feel like she’d shoved her head into a Christmas sweater and then set it on fire. “What the hell are you down there anyways, Maccac?”

“I was all primed to fight the man who defeated my Master,” he called up, his pug face creased with worry, “The man who stole his owner.”

“Are you serious?” she asked, and began to listlessly thwack at the lock with crowbar as if it were a baseball bat. “Really?”

“Yeah, McGee set it up. If I won, I would win back my Master’s owner, three hundred dollars and two all you can eat coupons at Red Lobster.”

“Look, I could have taken you to Red Lobster myself if that was what you wanted.”

“No,” said Ragin’ Maccac, aping her voice, “That’s not 'what I wanted'. I mean, this revenge thing is pretty much the whole reason I came to Saratoga. It means a lot to me.”

“So where’s the man who defeated your Master? How come he isn’t down there with you?” Havvy took off her glasses and wiped her streaming eyes. The front of the penny arcade collapsed with an awful whoomph.

Ragin’ Maccac looked down sheepishly. “He’s the one who set the fire.”

“Ah,” said Havvy, and then began to whoop and cough again. The ceiling was now obscured by thick smoke, everything lit up in hellish hues and tincts of crimson and clover.

“Leave me!” cried Ragin’ Maccac, leaping up and down in helpless fury.

“I won’t,” said Havvy, falling onto all fours. “Nobody else has ever been there for you. I swore I wouldn’t dessert you. And I shan’t.”

“Look, get the gun from behind McGee’s counter. Shoot the lock off!”

Havvy nodded, and crawled away from the pit and towards the counter, bumping her head into it before pausing, reconnoitering and circling around. The shot gun gleamed and glittered evilly where it hung suspended on tenterhooks beneath the counter, a Decepticon sticker adhered to its stock.

Crawling back, Havvy sat on her ample ass and primed the gun. “Here we go,” she yelled, and pulled the trigger. The recoil knocked her flat on her back, and a spray of sparks were engulfed by the roiling flames that were by now licking their way towards the pit. But the lock blew off, and Ragin’ Maccac was up and out in a moment.

“Come on, sweet Havvy, let’s go.” He swung her up onto his shoulder as if she were a sack of the sweetest potatoes, and turned to search out an exit. There was none. Only raging curtains of smoke and flame. Somewhere zombies were still groaning.

“There’s no way out!” he cried.

“I think the back door was that way,” said Havvy, pointing blearily.

“Ok, here we go.” Ragin’ Maccac lowered his head and then whispered, “I love you, Haversham Malloy.”

“And I love you, Ragin’ Maccac.”

“Let’s do this like Brutus,” he said, and with a cry of rage ran forwards into the flames.

Golden trilobites and matters particulate

2008-08-31T10:37:00.001-07:00

The story begins in the mountains, when a gentlewoman scholar and a daring smuggler meet because of a mysterious artifact - possibly a weapon - that turns out to be sentient. It is about ordinary characters becoming heroes. The antagonist is motivated because that's what a scientist does.

The mountain pass is charged with music, with the music of the wind that comes tearing down from up on high, from Mount Dena, dry and bitter and fluting through the passes. It’s a bitter wind, cruel like bone knives and sharp and as cutting. It brings dust and all manner of matters particulate; it insinuates itself deep into crevices and homes. It’s a constant reminder that this is a hard land. A harsh land, as ancient as it is uncaring, as blood drenched as it is replete with history.

The woman misses her burka, its thick cotton, its all enclosing capacity. It afforded her protection from the wind as well as from the eyes of others, allowed her to walk unchallenged and warm where she might otherwise be challenged and arrested. Better than bribes, better than pleas, it allowed her to reach this pass, this particular isolated mountain inn without too much trouble. Her group was to pass onwards and back down into Iran tomorrow. With luck she would continue her travels with it.

But it was back in her room, however. Her identity as Jamila Ormuz shucked as easily, left folded beneath her pillow. In a manner most unladylike she had slipped out her window, fallen to the dirt path behind the inn, and then hurried to the arranged rendezvous location. Where Tamaz would be waiting for her. Where Tamaz the insane smuggler would be waiting for her with the legendary Scribe of Bait al-Hikma.

Hard scrabbling up an unforgiving slope, her hiking boots seeking traction. Hands scored by flint as she sought purchase. Up to the ledge Tamaz had assured her was there, high above the inn. Were it not for the panoply of stars overhead, she would be climbing blind. As is, everything is but faintly limned. The air is cold, thin, hard to push into her lungs in sufficient quantity. There’s no path to speak of, the goat trail he had told her was the means to ascent quickly lost. Were it not for the urgency of her task, she’d turn back, give up the cause for lost.

“Miss Jennifer,” hisses a deep voice from her left, and she starts, shies like a nervous horse, nearly falls. “Miss Jennifer,” says the voice, “Is being over here.”

Tamaz. His butcherings of the English language never so welcome. Side scrabbling like a crab, she gains his ledge. It was closer than she had dared hope. Soon she squats before him and two other men, all of them tightly packed on the ledge that looks out over the inn below, the descending road that follows the pass down into the plains of Iran. Or crosses down into Iraq on the other side. From where Tamaz has just come.

“You are being mad, Miss Jennifer,” he says gravely, “You risk too much.”

“Do you have it?” she asks, seeking to gain her breath.

“Of course,” he says, and his teeth flash white in the night. “But the price has doubled.”

Jennifer immediately begins to argue, but only because it is expected of her. She’s brought enough to pay him three times over, all the funding her Department had allocated for the next year’s expenses. But she didn’t care. The Scribe, the Scribe of Bait al-Hikma, the legendary House of Wisdom, the famous library of 12^th century Baghdad. The Scribe, reputed to have taught Thabit ibn-Qurra how to translate Greek in a week, to have aided countless Arabic scholars in turning Baghdad the center of learning in the world for over four hundred years—hers at last.

Finally they agreed upon an increase of only 150% from the original price, and Tamaz sat back, his smile evident once more. “Here it is,” he said, and drew forth a small box.

Jennifer stifled an immediate feeling of disappointment. So small? She took it, was mollified by its weight, and then opened the box to check the contents. A dull gleam of gold. Ridges, serrated edges. She looked up to Tamaz, who was watching her intently.

“It is being the Scribe,” he said, sensing her distrust, “I am finding it from a man who killed the man who stole it from the Baghdad museum in 2003. It is the original. This I swear.”

There was nothing for it. She closed the box, put it in her pack, and nodded. “Thank you. I have to go back down before I am missed.”

“Good luck, Miss Jennifer,” said Tamaz, his friends already melting back into the darkness. “I hope this is being worth your troubles.” And then he was gone.

Jennifer took a deep breath, suddenly burning to get back to her room, the illuminated privacy in which she could examine the Scribe. Sliding down, digging her heels into the scree, she couldn’t help but touch the box over and over again, assuring herself it was there.

Twenty minutes later and she was back in her room, slender rope ladder tucked back into her belongings, window shutters pulled closed behind her. Heart racing like at the hooves of a horse in full gallop, she listened in the darkness. Nothing. She moved to her bedside table, found the box of matches, lit one. Lit the candle, a second, blew out the match. Sat on the hard pallet set on the raised bedframe, pulled the box out.

The box was plain, made of wood, half the size of a shoebox. She traced its simple patterns of grain, and then slipped the lid off. Within was a trilobite made of gold, some metallic crustacean, segmented and armor plated. Its eyes were rubies, and it was with trepidation that she pulled it out of the box, fingers curling around its hard metal edges. She set it on the bedside table, and then stared at it, fascinated. It was exactly as described by Yakub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi. Turning, she drew forth her notes, condensed into a few spare sheets, jottings that only she could decipher. The fruits of over five years research, five years painful detective work amongst ancient tomes, forgotten databases, exotic texts.

Her finger traced the sentences, paused at al-Kindi’s admonishment, and then underlined the Masu Brother’s instructions. Turning back to the Scribe, she placed her fingers carefully on its head, and then in a specific order, depressed the jewels.

It didn’t hum to life. There was no whirring of gears, no sliding of joints, no mechanical noises at all. But Jennifer was immediately aware that it was on. Activated. Now, to use it, to decipher the texts she had brought with her, perhaps she had to slide it over the words…?

The Scribe spoke. The language was Arabic, but so ancient a dialect she couldn’t understand it at all. It pauses, and then spoke again. Jennifer sat completely still. Frozen. Finally, she ventured, “Excuse me..?”

The Scribe spoke again, and then repeated to her in a coppery voice, “Excuse me?”

“I… I don’t know what you mean,” she said. It sat silently, thoughtfully, and then raised itself on crab legs. She started back, suddenly repulsed. It swayed from side to side, and then leaped off the table top, along the floor, up onto her bed. It was with extreme control that she didn’t scream. It moved to her bag, and then tipped it over with one extended leg. Jennifer watched with fascination as it began to draw forth documents. Tease out pages, which it then walked over slowly, vibrating minutely from side to side as it did so.

She felt paralyzed. Watched with a helpless wonder. Was it teaching itself English? Attempting to? What manner of machine was this to behave thus? She had expected a wonder, but not a miracle. Had hoped for a technological marvel of the eleventh century, but not something beyond the abilities of the 21^st.

A knock on the door. She startled again, and wanted curse, sudden anger flooding her. This was becoming more than she could bear.

“Miss Jennifer,” said the voice from without, and the floor of her stomach fell out from under her. “Miss Jennifer, please open the door.”

She looked wildly about, surmising, hoping, evaluating. Out the window? Into the pass, and then—what? Run down the mountain sides, in the dark, no doubt chased? Instead, she drew forth her American Passport. Picked up the Scribe, which curled its legs under its body, and stashed it in the box, closed the lid, shoved it under the bed.

The man outside was tall, handsome, hair whitening at his temples. He was dressed in elegant of subdued clothing, and was alone.

“Miss Jennifer, my name is Khaled Jabbar, and I believe you are in possession of stolen artifacts from Iraq. May I please come in and search your premises?”

“No,” she said, and raised her passport. “I am an American Citizen. I demand to be escorted to the closest US embassy.”

Khaled looked at her passport with mild curiosity, and then shook his head. “Should you be found not to be holding stolen Iraqi artifacts, it will be my pleasure to escort you. If that is not the case, then I will have to arrest you and hand you over to Iranian authorities.”

He pushed past her. He smelled of cloves and cigarette smoke. He entered the room, and looked about. Jennifer’s mind whirled. Who was he? How had he learned of her acquisition?

Kneeling, he drew forth the box. In a moment of madness, she considered attacking him. He opened the box, and the Scribe scuttled out. Khaled let out a hoarse cry, and fell back onto his ass.

“It is true,” he said, “You have the Scribe of Bait al-Hikma.”

“How did you know?” she asked him, legs weak. She sank onto the only chair in the room.

“Tamaz is an informant of ours,” he said, rising to his feet. The Scribe stared at Khaled, and then at Jennifer, and then climbed back up onto the bed.

“Tamaz,” she said, wanting to crumple into her chest. “Tamaz.”

“Remarkable,” said Khaled. The Scribe began to read another sheet of paper.

“You are going to return this to the Iraqi authorities?” she asked.

“Of course. We are going to open it. Learn how it works. Attempt to understand where it came from. It is over a thousand years old, but still looks new. Remarkable.”

The Scribe paused, turned to each of them, long antennae wavering from side to side, and then continued to read.

“Fuck,” said Jennifer, and leaned forward, cupping her face in her hands. “Fuck.”

“It is too late for regrets, Miss Jennifer,” said Khaled, rising to his feet. “If you tell us what you know about this artifact, it could help lighten your punishment.”

“There’s not much to know,” she said. “It’s not even supposed to really exist. It’s a myth.”

“Clearly not,” said Khaled.

“It was made prominent by Thabin ibn-Qurra, a Sabian of Harran. A proto-Judeo sect. Advanced angeology. Worshipped the planets. Look, what’s going to happen to me?”

“Beheading,” said Khaled.

“What?”

“I’m just joking. You will probably go to jail.”

“Fuck,” she said, “Fuck you.”

“Fuck you,” said the Scribe, turning to them both again. “Beheading.”

Neither Khaled nor Jennifer said anything. They stared at the Scribe, which went back to reading the sheets of paper it was pulling from the satchel.

“Can you turn it off?” asked Khaled.

“No,” lied Jennifer.

“How is it running?” he asked, moving closer. “Did you wind it up?”

Jennifer laughed. “Are you thick? It’s speaking English to us. And you think I wound it up?”

“Good… point. Put it back in the box.”

“No.”

Khaled straightened and stared down at her, his face severe. “Do as I say.”

“I’ll scream. That should embarrass you, right?”

“Not as much as the whipping you’ll get will embarrass you.”

Jennifer stared up at Khaled. Held his gaze. Opened her mouth to scream, and then fell from her chair, his backhand making her see lights.

There was a fizzing, bubbling sound, and then a thud. She looked up, wiping blood from her mouth. Saw Khaled lying on the floor, half of his head melted away. Blood and brains was oozing out onto the carpet. The Scribe was oriented towards the fallen man, and then said, “Beheading.”

“Beheading,” said Jennifer, eyes wide. She scooted away from the body. Against the wall. Head still ringing. Raised her eyes to the golden trilobite where it had begun to read again. Stared at it. Couldn’t think. Tried to remember al-Kindi’s warning over ownership, over patronage. But the words wouldn’t come to her.

Outside the wind came shrilling down from Mount Dena. The wind came shrilling and cutting, carrying all manner of matters particulate before it, from the darkness above, past the island of light in the pass, and into the darkness below.

A quincunx and elements of ghosts

2008-08-30T08:58:00.000-07:00

The antagonist of this piece is a lady novelist, while the protagonist is a man missing his left eye. Neither of them are motivated because they are diverting attention from something else. The plot begins with a quincunx in an island paradise. The ending includes elements of ghosts and following someone through the end of the world.

We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges. – Gene Wolfe

“What do you think,” asked Dr. Theobald, “Will this suffice?”

Elizabeth paused and gazed about the clearing, one hand resting on the smooth bole of a palm tree. A wild effusion of grass sprang riot up the gentle slope, and it was enclosed on all sides by Bermuda’s dense jungle. “Yes,” she said, “It will do.”

Dr. Theobald nodded, passed his handkerchief once more over his forehead, adjusted the patch of his left eye, and then stepped off the path to ford his way to the center where he deposited the picnic basket. “Well, if we’re not eaten by an army of ants or carried away by jaguars, this may prove a very pleasant spot indeed.”

Elizabeth laughed, a low, throaty sound, and followed him into the sunlight, the long, slender blades of grass whisking past the blue skirt of her sundress. She stood still and watched as her husband drew out a blanket and cast it out over the grass like a fisherman seeking to net some earthen catch. He then shucked his shoes and stepped onto it, bringing the basket with him.

“An excellent idea, Elizabeth,” he said, lowering himself carefully onto his knees. “A trifle warm, to be sure, but that’s the tropics for you.” He opened the basket and began to draw forth glasses, a bottle of wine, a bottle opener, plates and tupperware. “To think of Bertrand slaving away on the Upper Eastside, inhaling exhaust and fumes of uric acid. Positively delightful.”

Elizabeth nodded, but didn’t answer. She reached into her purse, and drew forth a deck of cards.

“It is important to get away,” continued Dr. Theobald, pausing to run his hand through his illustrious silver beard, “To regroup, as it were. One can grow lost in the very bustle of one’s life, lose one’s way, as Dante said. One often needs perspective, distance. Don’t you agree?”

“Yes,” said Elizabeth, her voice soft. She began to walk towards the edge of the clearing, shuffling slowly through the deck of oversized cards.

“Of course,” continued the Doctor, “It’s times like these that one feels one’s greatest losses the most.” He took up the bottle of white wine, considered it. “I often find that at my happiest I am struck by a tinge of melancholy. Do you feel it now?”

“You mean Marcus,” said Elizabeth, pausing before a broad tree. She took a pin from her hair, and skewered one of the large cards at face level onto the trunk.

“Indeed,” said Dr. Theobald, and then more quietly, “Indeed. He would have been how old, today? Four years old. Four years. How time does pass.”

“Four and a half,” said Elizabeth, drawing forth a second card as she resumed walking around the clearing.

“Yes, well.” The Doctor tore the lead cap off the bottle’s neck, unwinding it like gauze from a mummified limb, and then dug the tip of the bottle opener’s screw into the cork. “We shouldn’t forget victories, successes. Causes for mirth and joy.” He began to twist the screw. “Your Circe and Medea. If you give a moment we’ll toast to it. To your success, and our third year of marriage.” He looked up then with a tentative smile as she pinned the second card to another tree. “What are you doing, my dear?”

“I’ll tell you soon, Theo. Just one moment.”

Dr. Theobald poured golden wine into one glass, and then a second, and for awhile the clearing was filled with the clarion call of a distant bird. Lowering himself to sit with his legs awkwardly extended before him, he watched his wife pin a third card to a tree, directly opposite the first. “You know, I don’t think you’ve ever looked so beautiful.”

Elizabeth turned to gaze at him, a fond, tolerating smile on her lips. “Your eyesight must be finally going.”

“No,” said the Doctor, “You would send Rossetti into paroxysms of ecstasy. As it is, I can barely refrain from ravishing you right now.”

Elizabeth paused before the fourth tree, and pinned a card to its trunk. Turning, she faced her husband, and gazed indulgently at where he sat, marooned on his island of cloth.

“Now, what are those cards you’ve pinned to those trees? Is this some sort of ritual we’re enacting?”

“Of sorts, Theo.” Elizabeth began to walk towards him. The air had begun to grow charged, as if a storm were approaching. “A ritual of my own devising, if you will, but one who’s efficacy, or potency, should not be diminished due to my own innovations.”

She slipped out of her sandals and stepped onto the blanket, and knelt down to take the glass of wine from him. As she did so, she extended a final card to him, which he took.

“What’s this then?” Dr. Theobald examined the colorful image on the card, holding it away from his face so as to focus on it. A man sat in full regalia on a throne, flanked by twin fluted columns. He wore red robes and a golden miter, and held one hand raised in benediction. “A tarot card?”

“Yes,” said Elizabeth, making herself comfortable. “Commonly known as the Pope, the fifth card in the Major Arcana.”

Dr. Theobald took another sip from his wine, and then looked at his glass with a frown. “I think this wine might be off.”

“I don’t think it’s the wine,” said Elizabeth, though she set her glass down on one of the plates. “You’ll observe the four other cards I’ve set around the clearing. Each is the fifth of each suit from the Minor Arcana. With your holding the fifth, I’ve formed a quincunx, centered on you.”

“A quincunx, hmm?” Dr. Theo gazed at his card once more, and then turned his attention to his wife.

“Yes. Five represents the essence of things as they are, the qualia of the world, if you will. Think of the word quintessence, for example. It also evokes the five senses. I’ve sought to pin the essence of who you are to this very moment, this very place.”

Dr. Theo lowered his brows. “To what end, dear?” He raised his handkerchief once more to mop at his brow. He was beginning to sweat profusely.

“The Pope is commonly known as ‘the Pontiff’,” she continued, ignoring his question, “Which translates into ‘the bridge’. He connects Heaven and Earth, a bridge between the deity and the human. But he is also known by another name, an older name: the Hierophant.”

“I’m not feeling well at all,” said Dr. Theobald. He slipped a finger under his collar, and pulled so as to loosen it. “Damn it. I’m afraid we may have to return to the hotel.”

“One moment, dear.” Elizabeth smiled at him, and he relaxed fractionally, returning his weight to one outstretched arm. “The Hierophant means literally ‘he who teaches holy things’, and is a complex symbol, one with many interpretations. One of its main associations is with the Deceiver, and is strongly connected with the card of Temperance, which guides the souls to the underworld.”

Dr. Theobald blinked several times, and in seeking to adjust his position knocked over his glass of wine. He ignored it. “I’m sorry, Elizabeth, but just what are you seeking to imply here? Is this meant to be some sort of attack?”

“Not an attack, but a description, a prescription if you will. As a therapist, you seek to be your patient’s guide between their conscious and subconscious. It is in that role that we met, and it was through that power that you sought to assuage me of my grief. You seek to bring individuation, to help others distinguish the boundaries between themselves and the world around them. You sought to console me, but in doing so attempted to part me from Marcus, my son.”

Dr. Theobald’s face began to darken. Sweat was pouring down his face, drenching his shirt.

“What I learned in my studies, Theo, is that certain rituals have power. That power stems from desire and belief. There are patterns in the world that affect us, whether we are aware of them or not, resonances that we feel even if we do not understand them. What I have sought to do here today is amplify them to the point of climax, to bring the moment to a crisis.”

Dr. Theobald pushed himself to his feet. He swayed in the bright sunlight, face lowered, and seemed suddenly taller, his shoulders broader. He reached out, as if seeking a staff, a spear on which to rest his weight, but found none.

“That is why I suggested this island. Bermuda, Theo, is believed to be the inspiration for Shakespeare’s Tempest.”

“My Prospero to your Sycorax,” said Theo, and his voice was harder now, tinged with dark amusement. Utterly unlike his normal tone. Still he stared down, seeking to gain his footing.

“Yes…” said Elizabeth, momentarily discomfited by his sudden assurance. “Yes, that’s right. But the patterns go back further than that.” She looked up at him, and brushed a strand of black hair from her face. “There are other patterns.”

Dr. Theobald slowed, stopped swaying. He reached up, and ran a claw of hand through his white hair. Lifted his face, and stared at Elizabeth with his one good eye. “Other patterns, yes. I feel them now.”

Elizabeth shifted back, raised her chin. The sky above was still a sterling blue, but here in the clearing it had grown murkier, as if they were at the bottom of a pond or well. She could no longer hear the sounds of birds calling to each other. No longer hear anything but a distant thrum that seemed to grow louder. The cards, where they were pinned, writhed.

“On the Viking version of the Tarot,” she continued, “The Hierophant is represented by Odin.”

“Wotan,” said Dr. Theobald, and he smiled, smiled and his teeth were yellowed, longer and sharper than they had been. He reached up then, took hold of his eye patch, and tore it free. It fluttered from his hand, torn away by a sudden wind. “Known as Yggr, Sigfodr, the All-Father.”

Elizabeth scrambled to her feet, drew back from the lean and angular figure that Theobald had begun. His one eye stared at her, but it was from the withered cavity that she felt piercing strength flow and skewer her. “Sycorax to Prospero, the Norns to Odin,” she said, the wind stealing the words from her mouth. But she felt none of the power she had hoped for, no apotheosis, no certainty.

“Theobald to Prospero, Prospero to Odin, Odin to Lugus, Lugus to Mercury, Mercury to Hermes.” His voice echoed within her. Reverberated within the deepest vaults of her mind. The grass was flattened all about her, radiating out in concentric circles from where Theobald stood, though she felt not a push of wind. The resonances were cascading into each other now, collapsing into this symbolic singularity. Soon it would tear itself apart. The moment was now.

“Take me to Marcus,” she cried, leaning forward into the force that the thing that had once been Theobald exuded, “You are psychopomp, carrier of souls, guide to the underworld, liminal and messenger, knower and deceiver, take me to my son!”

The trees had blurred around them, had been leached of all color and hue, turned ashen and gray. The sky above them had darkened so night seemed to have fallen across the island, and rank, bitter terror throbbed in Elizabeth’s stuttering heart. But she held to the one solid spar that had guided her since she had first learned of this possibility, held to her sunquenching desire for her son, stared the old god right in the eye.

“So be it,” said its voice, discarnate and complete, and around her were whipping faces and the ghosts of faces, translucent limbs more real now then the grass and trees, eyes hollowed and mouths gaping. A cold began to pierce her, a blanket of enervating ice that sank through her skin and extinguished the heat at the core of her being. Elizabeth sank to her knees, and saw a eidolon approach her, familiar in form, known from her dreams, her most fervent wishes.

“Marcus…” she whispered, and it drew closer, closer yet, and almost she could distinguish his features, read the smile on his blue lips. “Marcus she whispered, and then keeled forward, face digging into the grass, heart quelled, blood stopped, as her soul was torn free by the summoned god, and sent winging into the dark.

Mechanical hearts are more certain than flesh

2008-08-29T08:20:00.000-07:00

Your story is a romance between a villain who considers doing the right thing and a boy who cries. The lovers experience lost knowledge and automated whales while in Singapore. One of them is motivated because they've always wanted to be a hero.

The key was shaped like a ganglial nerve, which was fitting, and impressive, given its antiquity. I had inserted it with utmost care into the boy’s head through his bone polished ocular cavity and turned it once twice three times. The boy’s body had shuddered into life, twitching and spasming minutely, and I had sat back on my heels, waiting for signs of sentience, awareness, gratitude.

They were long in coming. I left him there, supine on his faded red velvet couch, the key emerging from the pit of his eye like a slender flute of bone, grimacing and flinching at phantasms I could not see. Instead I wandered his home, the vast subterranean cavern, the echoing ceiling distant and buttressed with wings of granite and pig iron. I walked amongst his inventions, not touched for over a century. Clockwork birds rusted into obsolescence. Simulacra of the galaxy, pleasingly inexact, which I set into motion with put a push of my hand. An oscillating set of mirrors whose function I couldn’t divine.

Finally I came to the dark waters that filled the rear third of his cavern, that heaved and lapped at the shore, opaque and warm and mysterious. An exit to the ocean, a tunnel no doubt in whose depths might languish a bronze submarine or other such wonder. The boy had been fond of exploring the Riau Islands.

“Silica,” said the boy, his voice as sere as ashes. “Silica.”

I turned and regained his side. The key had begun to spin in his eye, and his face had gained composure. His remaining eye was focused on my face, though it welled with water that brimmed and ran down his smooth cheek. He raised his hand, and pointed to a clear cylinder of white sand.

I filled a tin cup with the powder, and handed it to him. Carefully, he sat up, tilted his head back as if it were hinged at the base of his neck, and poured the sand down his throat. He wasted not a grain, and closed his lips when the last of the silent cascade was gone.

“I had not thought to live again,” he said, turning to gaze at me.

“You have always been but a boy,” I said, “And never a man. Your life begins now.” I pushed him back onto his couch, his body hard and unyielding, artificial, the light in his eye flaring. I pushed him down, and swung my leg over so as to straddle him. Bending down, canting my head so as to avoid the spinning key, I kissed him and tasted dust and cinnamon.

After, I lay next to him, the cavern silent but for the quiet flux of the tide and the grind of his ever spinning key. I traced arabesque patterns across his smooth chest, and watched his face as he stared at the ceiling. He had cried until the last, his eye welling water, but now, at long last, when he finished, he had finished. Rank disappointment curdled within me. Dust not seed, and I knew that no life had been kindled within me.

“I remember catching a bird when I was young, taking it from the sky and spreading its feathers and parting its chest with my thumbs. Its feathers were as crimson as its blood, and I replaced its heart with a machination of my own devising. It ascended towards the sun when I released it, flew up till I could see it no more, a speck and then gone. I stood for twenty minutes upon the shore, waiting, and then I saw it plummet down and into the ocean. I swam out, but it had sunk and was gone.”

I continued to touch him, listening to his dry whisper. “I remember that, but not the face of my mother. I know how to bury a fox so as to avoid its revenge, but not how to create planetary gears. I can summon Pohludeo, but no longer understand why I should.”

“For me,” I whispered.

The boy arose and walked naked to the water’s edge. I followed. He extended his hand out parted his fingers in a series of fluid gestures. I stood by his side, shivering. A dull orange light awoke beneath the waves.

I had been correct in my surmises. The waters began to boil, and a great shape arose from the depths. It was of the darkest blue, a mineral color, cobalt hued, and it arose through some natural buoyancy, not through some mechanical motion. The waters sluiced down its flanks and flanges and it opened its great mouth wide.

“Pohludeo,” I said, staring at the great whale. A musty breeze swirled out from its hollow center, redolent of rust and mold.

“Pohludeo,” said the boy, and unbidden tears came again to his eye. “I journeyed far within him. Though I have forgotten I know I saw wonders through his eyes. I thought that through him I might effect change. I might impose my will on the world, and ennoble it. But I stumbled and kept my gaze on the ground, never lifting it to the heavens. I wasted my years…”

The waters surged and shifted around the pelagic form of Pohludeo. Its eyes caused shimmering ripples of amber light to play across the ceiling of the cavern. The boy turned from its vast face, and stumbled back to his velvet couch.

“I thought that mechanical hearts were more certain than those of the flesh,” he said, as he lay down on the worn cushions. “I thought that certainty was of greater worth than the pleasures to be found in the vicissitudes of life. There is nothing more certain than death, however, and so I beg of you. Release me.”

I stood over his hunched form, and swept my gaze over his toys of copper and his wonders of gold, all sheathed in dust, miracles in his time and but mere extravagant toys in mine. Had he been born but today, and not a century ago, had I been able to conceive his son—but no.

The boy turned his face to me, the key yet spinning, his eye blinded by tears. I considered him, and then laughed, darkness welling up within me to drown me within my own bitterness, and then turned to ascend once more to the world.

Cyclical conceptions mark the passage of my penance

2008-08-28T17:27:00.001-07:00

The protagonist of this story is someone who suffers stoically and has a mechanical pet. On the way to the story's conclusion the protagonist encounters a broken character. This person has a whip. Plot elements include sports and the comforting ritual of the smoker, and at least one character is motivated because of an addiction to drama.

There are many reasons to come to the Aeries of Alongquo, but mine has been the most spurious and fanciful. This is at odds with my nature, which has been declared staunch and direct, but still I have journeyed here, and here I am now imprisoned, though each dawn I mount Jalopard and soar into the illimitable skies. Each dusk I return, bound by my word, and by the madness of my Proconsul. Though the wind moans past my cave entrance each night, though Jalopard stirs and gazes at me with burning eye, I turn away from flight, and endure.

On the Fields of Thrassos, where the Iron God had fallen, and where his great bones lay rusting still, I had danced and raced as a young man. My courage was matched only by my fleetness of foot, and I denied no challenge, though failure meant death, or worse, dismemberment. Victory became a logical conclusion to my competing, and every fortnight was marked by pageantry and celebration as I won honors and accolades. It was there that I made love to Paleagogi, the daughter of the Proconsul, some five hundred spans within the dark fastness of the Iron God’s thigh. Where I marked my greatest conquest with a cry that I believe echoes still within the God’s thoracic cavity.

The Proconsul was pleased when Paleagogi became pregnant, and agreed to our marriage. He promised that I would witness the birth of our first child. But, being the twisted heresiarch that he is, he demanded I wrest the Whip of Tongues from Kaeliber herself. A new wife needed to know the touch of discipline, he asserted, gazing at me from the corner of his eyes, would need to feel the sensual slide of muscular leather along her thigh. I could not but accede, and so mounted Jalopard, swept my grandfather’s cloak of shadows about my shoulders and flew for the peaks.

But not before the Proconsul gave his final twist of the knife. He bid that I visit the maimed witches that swam within the amber tear drops that yet fell from the Iron God’s blank eyes, and allow them to drain me of my seed. With it they would impregnate Paleagogi each time she conceived, each time they killed our newborn child. I would indeed return to see the birth of my heir, no matter how long my quest took.

Kaeliber mocks me daily, flitting about the peak of Alongquo like the soul shard of a primeval bat, always ahead of me no matter how I urge Jalopard on, how I dig my heels into his iron flanks. Encloaked in shadow, as fast as the West Wind, we chase the mad Kaeliber, whose shrieks for liberation and death mock us as she outpaces us, until Jalopard’s eyes grow dull and we are forced to return to our cave.

And so I sit, each night, my back to the dark currents that suck and pull at my cloak of shadows, that beckon for my mount and I to return to the Fields of Thrassos and slay the Proconsul and take Paleagogi as my wife and be done with this madness. But instead each night I draw forth my pipe weed and tamp it down into my long-stemmed pipe, watching my fingers as they move and order and prepare. When I inhale and the flame bends into the bowl, when the weed catches fire and I blow forth my first plume of smoke, I feel a calmness enter my soul, and know that there is no flight from honor, no escape from my bond.